Hello all, 

I'm working on a post about sexual addiction and want to get a sense of what we think of when we picture a sex addict. Please just give me your gut thought. I put the possible associations in alphabetical order


Poll #1828864 Sex Addiction Quick and Dirty Poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20

What is the first behavior that comes to mind when you think of "sex addiction"?

Friends, mostly. 
I'll add you back, probably.

I haven't been here in ages. Then, a few weeks ago, I went back to find some old post I wrote and it's gone! In fact, I can only go back 500 posts. I can't believe I wrote so many posts, but that's beside the point. How do I get my old posts back? Does anyone know?

I hope everyone is doing well. I'm side tracked by some other writing projects and work and Annie. Life continues apace.

Her name is Annie. I get the sense that always was her name, since Jill and Shannon immediately saw her as an Annie once I proposed the name. So yes, my glorious, prancy, big, sweet mare answers to Annie now.

Just to be clear, this is not her namesake






Neither is this:


Here is Annie's namesake:



Annie Sullivan was Helen Keller's teacher for 49 years. She was a badass, devoted, brilliant, kind, cutting-edge teacher. She is Annie's namesake.

Tags: annie

We went for a little ride today.

First, we practiced circling the mounting block until Horsie was standing still and lined up. Then we walked by the sign that scared Horsie yesterday. She totally ignored it. Good girl! We walked by Kermit and Bella and practiced focusing on the ride instead of their requests for attention. Kermit and Bella thought that sucked, but I sure was proud of Horsie for ignoring them. Then we saw some scary horse mats on the ground and walked over them. We circled Robin's field and then made our way home.

We were both feeling pretty proud:


Horsie is so great! I like her so much!

She needs a name though -- any ideas?

I've been quiet for while, I know, but I have a *really* good excuse.

I was adopting a horse!

A horse! A big, glorious, sweet, young, prancy-sometimes, beautiful-always, wondrous, miraculous horse.

Here she is, as I led her around the field for the first time:


That was Saturday, the day Shannon and I drove out to Mid-Atlantic Horse Rescue to pick her up. It was about an hour and a half each way, and on the way back, I kept looking back to see her head through the trailer window. The breeze picked up her mane and jostled it about and I couldn't really believe that it was all happening so quickly, but I guess you just know when you find the horse who makes sense to you.

Her racehorse name is My Ex-Girlfriend. Bev (from the rescue) found her at the New Holland auction, where she had been mauled the night before by a stallion who got loose. Since My Ex-GF was tied with nylon, she couldn't get away, and was covered with cuts when she went through the auction. Instead of going to the butcher, Bev bought the mare and, after running her tattoo, realized she was a granddaughter of Seattle Slew! (Son of Harry the Hat, for those of you into great-event-horse-sires). She was never raced, which is good news in my book.

After a few weeks to recover from her most serious wounds, Bev posted her photos on facebook. You can see that she's still pretty dinged up and thin from her previous life. But after a few months at Mid-Atlantic, my future as-of-yet-unnamed horse put on some weight and settled into her life with a herd of rescued mares.

A few weeks ago, I saw her on the site and liked her face. I kept going back to her and, after I presented my paper in Buffalo, I made an appointment to see her on 1 July. She was very herd-bound and freaked out if she had to be in a stall, but I sure did like riding her. Here we are:



I knew she was great for me, but I made myself wait overnight and called Shannon, Jill, and Alyssa to list everything I could think of that was bad about her: she freaked out in a stall, she pulled on the lead, she was completely herd-bound. They all pish-poshed my concerns and reminded me that these were problems we could deal with. Plus, Horsie (as I call her until we think of her forever name) was very low on the pecking order, so she'd be great with any of the horses, and she had a nice disposition, and I would get a voucher to cover $200 worth of training.

So I wrote Bev to say YES I WANT HER!

After a vet check, where she was most certainly a big handful of a girl and the vet said she needed to learn some ground manners and gain confidence, she was cleared for adoption. And then it was Friday night and Shannon called to say the brakes weren't working on the trailer and we might not be able to get her, and then a few hours later, she called to say Matt had installed brakes on another truck with another trailer and we were off to get my new horsie.

When we got to the farm, we carefully led her into her stall, ready for drama. Only there was
...none.

She whuffled a hello to Kermit, angled herself up to the fan, and settled right in. No drama there.

So we introduced her to Kermit and Bella, ready for drama. Only there was none.

So we put them out in the field, where there was some splashing in the creek and some running around, but then she settled right in like this was all normal and no big deal at all.

Since then, Kermit and Bella have decided to pace the fenceline, pining away for Sasha and Grace, who are in the barn for the next few days, but Horsie is out in the field, eating grass or hanging out in the shelter, undisturbed by the drama unfolding around her. So much for herd bound.

Today, I went out to do the morning feed and Horsie went into her stall like it was a peaceful oasis, ate her grain, whuffled hello to Grace, and then let me tack her up and go out for a teensy little trail ride around the riding ring. Then we went back to the barn for a bath and some scritches before retiring to the upper field with Kermit and Bella.

Tomorrow, we'll maybe walk around the perimeter of the upper field. Maybe we'll trot around the ring a bit. Then I'll give her another bath and scritch her mane (she likes that) and give her lots of carrots and tell her how wondrous it seems to me that I should get to have a horse like her in my life.

It's been an awfully painful few months, filled with loss and grief. I still expect to see Rosie in her field when i drive up to the barn. I still can't say goodnight to all my creatures because I can't bring myself to say "Spirit Rosie" instead of just "Rosie," but I went to see her grave today and felt peaceful and ok with it all. Rosie would want another horse, bound for slaughter, to live the sort of life Rosie lived.

So it is with great joy that I tell you that I have found a new companion, a big, glorious, athletic, sweet mare who is already enjoying the sort of life she deserves.

Tags: barn, rosie

Please feel free to share/crosspost, etc.

I got arrested today. My crime? Watching an officer potentially pester a drug user who had nodded out on a neighbor's stoop. The guy didn't even notice the officer, who had his baton out and was aiming it at the guy. An uncapped syringe had fallen out onto the stoop and I offered to pick it up and put it in a glass bottle (the safest way to discard a syringe if you don't have a sharps container). The officer found this offensive and got mad at me. I said I would stand there and observe. He said I was putting him in danger because he had to have his back to the user to talk to me. I pointed out the user was still in a nod. He told me to back away, so I did. Then I asked him for his badge number and name and he refused to give it to me. I said I would wait for it. He called another officer, who peeled around the corner onto our block with her lights flashing.

First, she and the other officer conferred, leaving the drug user to sit on the stoop. Apparently now he wasn't so dangerous that no one could turn their back on him. The second officer came up to me and I explained that I was just observing. She said I couldn't. I said I believed I could. She said that the user had a syringe, which was against the law. I said he was actually allowed to possess a syringe. She said only if he was sick. I explained the executive order permitting users to carry syringes. I offered to show her the order in writing (I carry it in my wallet). She told me to put down my bag so she could cuff me. I asked her if she was serious and she said if I didn't put down my bag, things would get ugly.

After cuffing me, she put me in the police car and drove me to the station. She had me sit in a chair by a vending machine (?), still cuffed with my hands behind me. After about 1/2 a an hour, they brought me into a room farther back in the station. I kept asking if I could call work, since my students were going to wonder what I was. They kept saying I'd be out in 10 minutes. They would not let me call a colleague to notify my students. The original officer (as opposed to the one who actually arrested me) made a sarcastic remark about how I was a college professor. I said I really wanted to call a colleague and asked about every 5-10 minutes if I or someone else could call a colleague, but they kept refusing me or ignoring me.

The officer handcuffed me to a bench and left me there for a good long time, probably well over an hour. I asked a couple of times if they could handcuff my left hand instead of my right because my right shoulder is sore and my hand was getting sore too, but they ignored me.

After awhile, I struck up a conversation with another officer who was talking about his wrists hurting when he did push ups. I said that I knew a way to position his hands so that wouldn't happen. I showed them (clumsily, I was still handcuffed) and he and another guy tried it and were all excited because it worked. He asked me how I knew this and I told them about yoga and the officer asked me all sorts of questions and I recommended the Sunday class I go to. He said he might check it out in the next few weeks. Then, I told him about the history of drugs in this country. He kept saying, "that's amazing! I never knew that!" so I kept going, placing particular emphasis on the way that most drug scares are really about controlling people on the social margins (Black folk, Asian folk, Mexicans...). Finally, he agreed to give me my phone so I could call a colleague about my class. By then, it was too late. Class had started 15 minutes before and no one had let me make a simple phone call to avoid inconveniencing my students.

After about two hours in handcuffs, I said I had to pee. No one was sure what to do. Finally, the officer led me by the cuffs to a prison cell where a young girl was standing and crying. It was beyond disgusting, but I managed to balance myself over the bowl and pee. Then the officer led me by the cuffs back to the bench, where he reattached me. I joked about being a flight risk. I asked to be handcuffed by my left wrist this time and he still wouldn't change the cuffs.

At some point, I had to sign a form about the charges, which had changed from "disorderly conduct" to "failure to disperse." I asked to see the charges before I signed the little automatic signer thing and he said I couldn't, but that it said "failure to disperse." He still had me handcuffed, but released one hand so I could write. Then he led me like a dog on a leash back to the bench. I waited another period of time, probably about half an hour, handcuffed to the bench. By now, Officer Yoga had given me my cell phone, which was ringing almost constantly, and let me read my book.

Then, the original officer unattached me and recuffed my hands behind my back and led me back out to a police car. I asked where we were going and he instructed me to sit and wait. It turns out I had to go to community court to answer to a judge for my crime. Before they drove away, when no one else was nearby, he said that, now that we both had had time to cool down (by which I can only assume he meant himself because I had not gotten angry this whole time), he was sure I understood why he had to arrest me. Then he said he'd "play dumb" with the judge. I told him to do whatever he needed to do, but pointed out that I was one of those people who helped get syringes off the street so that officers like him didn't get stuck. He said he got attacked (?) by someone with a syringe and had to go on treatment for a year and had to wear a condom with his wife. I nodded and figured I really shouldn't be talking with him much more. He also told me that he had the right to tell me to leave wherever he wanted. I would even have to leave my house if he told me.

They drove me downtown and led me out of the police car, still in handcuffs. While we were driving to the court, the officers discussed the possibility that I was "interfering with police work." They weighed this option in terms of whether it applied if there were a crowd or just one person. I guess they decided against it, or maybe they couldn't have brought this charge anyway, since they already filled in the form. Or they were trying to freak me out.

I got led into the court in cuffs and no one else was allowed to ride in the elevator but us. When a man tried to get in, the officer blocked the door. The guy looked confused, so I showed him my hands in cuffs and shrugged.

At the court, the intake woman (if that's what she's called) instructed me to sit on some overturned crates and asked me some questions about my health and medications. She asked me if I wanted to hurt myself. I laughed. Then she sort of rolled her eyes and told the officer to take off my cuffs. Then she had me stand up so she could frisk me. She told me I should pray to Jesus Christ because he died for our sins. I thanked her but said I had different beliefs. She said no, it *had* to be Jesus. Then she led me into the court, where I was instructed to sit in a certain place on a bench.

In front of me were five men. They all looked at me, apparently surprised to see a woman. When one man got up, the judge told him to pull up his pants because they had a "lady" in the court. The officer of the court kept making the men change seats so that they were lined up in the order of appearance. As if they couldn't just get up and walk the 5 feet to the podium. As each man went up, the officer would make them all shift down by one. I got in trouble for giving two of the men mints. "If something happens to them, I get in trouble" an officer told me.

I want to tell you one really sad part: one man went before the judge and, instead of going along with the "we'll drop the charges if you get yourself in order before your next court date now just go on your way," he said he needed help, but all the treatment centers were closing down. The judge told him social services could help and the man said they couldn't because there was nowhere for him to get treatment. The judge asked the DA and the DA said something to the effect of, "not my job." I felt really bad for that guy. Once the men were all gone, the officer of the court instructed me to leave my empty bench to move to another empty bench and sit on a certain side of it. I sat there for about 2 minutes before being called up to face the judge.

The judge asked the DA (if that's what he was) what my crime was, the DA said, "failure to disperse" and the judge said, "do you want to do something with this?" and the DA said no. So the judge told me to come back on the 27th and that if I don't get arrested between now and then, they would drop the charges. I said OK. Then I asked if I could say one more thing. The judge gave me a look and said something to the effect that talking more would be potentially very stupid. I said I wanted to say it anyway. Then I told him about a great treatment center I knew about. He looked surprised and thanked me. He asked the DA if he heard about that center and the DA basically said some version of "not my job" again. But the judge asked someone to write it down.

Then they sprung me. The whole thing lasted from 10:15, when I got arrested, to about 2:00, when I was released.

As I was walking home, the officer who arrested me pulled up in his patrol car to say that he'd kept my license by accident and handed it to me in an envelope.

My college boyfriend, Joe, died very suddenly of a pulmonary embolism on Friday night.

Unlike when Ethan died, a mutual friend from college tracked me down and called me that night. The next morning, Josh IMed me from Iraq and we talked about Joe and how shocked we were to learn of his death. Clay has kept me updated via Jesse, who found out about the service this Wednesday from Joe's wife.

Joe was the first man I dated after Ethan and I broke up. He was beautiful and almost-annoyingly brilliant and intense and kind. I loved Joe with all the ardor and desperation of my youth.

I loved him more than I had loved anyone before and more than I have loved anyone since. It was a complicated relationship, my first unwitting and naive foray into open relationships. Neither he nor I were equipped to handle the situations we faced. I know that a good part of why I loved him so much more intensely than anyone else is because our love was so completely saturated with pain and confusion. When you're young, you think there's a correlation between suffering and love. When all the suffering had past, however, I found hidden in my marrow a deep love for a kind and good man.

I also loved him so deeply because we were in college and I was more wide open than I am now. I have since loved people more maturely, more sustainably, more sanely, but I have never -- will probably never -- love someone so much that I cannot hold still with it.

Joe, even now, 20 years later, I can feel as a sense memory, and I never really got over it or him. I would have done it all over again and sometimes I regret the loss of that naive willingness to leap, empty-handed, into loving another person because doing so led me to someone like Joe.

Our break-up was terrible; we betrayed each other completely. I never saw him again.

But in the years since, our lives had the occasional strange overlap, like when a woman in MA recognized me at a bus stop as "the woman who broke Joe's heart" five years after I graduated college. And when I tracked Joe down and sent him an email saying how sorry I was for the things I had done.

He wrote me back and said that he, too, was sorry for the things he had done. In the days leading up to his marriage, he went back to my dorm and cried and said goodbye to me and that part of his life. That was the end of our correspondence, but I always hoped that someday, we could find a way to be friends.

Then time moved on, and then the awful news on Friday that he was gone.

There's a lesson here about making amends - and probably about letting go too. There's a lesson about how quickly and randomly a life can end. There's a cautionary tale about love and the ways your college sweetheart (and high school sweetheart) can leave memories laced with memories even after you have grown older and wiser.

There were so many ways that Joe was wonderful, and when I'm ready, I'll write about them or talk about them. For now, I feel a heavy grief in my chest. Growing older means that you will have friends who die young. It hurts; it hurts.

Tags: college, dating, old friends

I'm at the point now where I don't really say I'm sad as often as I feel sad. If I updated my facebook more honestly, I'd mostly write, "I'm sad" a lot. 

The thing is, it doesn't do much good to tell people that I'm sad, because there really isn't anything anyone can say. There's nothing to process, no hard feelings, no ambivalence, no conflict. There's nothing I really need to figure out: I loved Rosie and she's dead. I organized my life around Rosie for 16 years. I owned her for 22. I feel lost without her. But what else is there to say, really? What do I gain by telling people something about which they can do nothing? Why put the people who care about me in such a difficult position when they are already so kind and generous? 

I'm also sad because three people I really enjoyed seeing are moving (have moved) pretty far away. I had enjoyed our largely easy times together, and now I have to recognize that seeing them will require travel, advance planning, change. 

It's a lot of change for one person to absorb, and I'm still in that stage of grief where I feel stuck in a holding pattern. I'm waiting for things to hurt less, for my mind not to deepen the groove in a single track, and I know that, with time, I won't feel so sad. 

But tonight, it was all just too much. I sobbed on Susan's sofa because I don't know how to be ok, and how to survive the next few months, and how to move on. Even as I say that, I know that I am moving on; I have survived the past month; I am ok.

This is the long slog of grief, the hollow-chested time that lingers like a chest cold. Someday, it will be spring and not raining and I will not have this ache and I will not have to work so hard just to be ok, but right now, i can only wonder why the dark night of the soul must always come at night, why so much loss must come at once, why I continue on anyway.

This is that part of grief where the initial flurry of pain has passed, where it gets kind of boring, where it hurts anyway.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go. (Emily Dickinson)

Most of you reading this know what I mean. I wish you didn't.

Tags: dating, not-dating, rosie

I had a really nice weekend anyway. On Saturday afternoon, after graduation, Mr. Smart and Good Looking (formerly known as N) came over. We finally caught up (etc.) in person, without being in a rush, and even went to Nam Phuong for a late dinner.

On Sunday, I tutored out in Yardley and, on my way home, bought 4 new fishies to start re-stocking my tank. Now my OT (Original Tetra) has two new (Serpae) Tetra buddies and my Danio is hanging his hat with two others. No one has quite gotten the school together, but there are tentative forays into pack swimming, which is wonderful to see.

When I got home, i mucked around in the garden, hacking away at weeds that had forest ambitions until Jen called and invited me over for a beer with her and Kyle. We sat around on their big red sofa, chatting about this and that and hatching grandiose plans for someday. Then, I went home for another art delivery (the auction is in a few days!) and set off for an evening at Susan's, where we ate dinner, drank wine left over from Mr. Smart and Good Looking's visit, and watched two more episodes of Breaking Bad.

On Sunday morning, when I woke up and realized that it was a month since Rosie died, I felt this moment of sadness, but then I beheld the many wonderful things in my life and felt blessed indeed.

This evening, I'm going out to see the Good Doctor and his wonderful girl, N. I'm bringing them eats from Nam Phuong, who should name a table after me if things keep going at this rate. Tomorrow morning, after I feed the horses, I'm off to hang out with Mr. Yoga.

I'm reminded of some lines from my favorite poem, "Wild Geese:" 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely
The world offers itself to your imagination
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
Over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Tags: dating, fish, friends, not-dating

Right about now, one month ago, Rosie died. A few hours later, my mother and sister arrived at my house to take care of me.

When Lydia said they were driving to Philadelphia, I said they didn't have to; I would be ok.

I actually thought it when I said it. Just as I meant it when I told Shannon and Jill that I could drive myself home from the barn. Fortunately for me, none of them believed me.

I had already felt the terror of Rosie struggling to get up and not being able to, of seeing her lie back down and start to jerk her legs as if trying to run. I had felt the hope that she would get up and then the horrible realization that she was going to die. I had pleaded with the universe not to take her away from me, pleaded with her not to die, and then understood that pleading would not make any of this stop. And I had gone as quiet as I could as she seized one more time and then was suddenly dead, there in my arms with my head on her still damp from the rain shoulder.

When Shannon walked in, I had done my sobbing and gasping and felt my head spin with grief. Then I had pulled myself away from Rosie's body and fed the chickens and helped shut down the barn for the night and let Shannon drive me home. During the drive home, I felt calm. Stupidly, for a few brief moments, I thought I was ok.

But I wasn't, and as I walked to my house from Susan's apartment, and saw my mom there on the steps waiting for me, I think I said, "Mom" and started sobbing so hard my legs buckled.

My mom and I don't tend to be physically affectionate. We greet each other in the European style: a kiss on each cheek. But in the middle of the night, when I found myself crawling around my bed because I couldn't get my skin to stop burning and prickling with the pressure of grief, my mom showed up in my bed and leaned back on the bedboard and held me in her arms.

For the next few days, she and Lydia didn't leave my side. Lydia slept with me and they sat with me on the sofa and stayed by me when I napped. They took me to see a movie and out for dinner and did my dishes and read magazines on the sofa. I oscillated between a sort of dry-eyed grief and terrified sobbing.

Since then, my grief has become a dull ache, and I mostly feel it in the form of my grasping heart. It clutches at things, desperate for love; it feels like this hollow, sucking void, and I want to fill it with love for people and animals and newly sprouting vegetables, even as I know that none of these things can satisfy the grasping. I'm trying to remember what it is to value people and animals and things on their own terms, instead of as salve on a wound, and I know I will have emerged from this next stage of grieving when everything becomes itself again, but until then, for today in particular, I've remembered what it meant to have my mom and sister there with me during those first overwhelming, hollow, burning days of grief.

I never planned to have children, and in many ways Rosie was both the love of my life and my most demanding child. Losing her has opened a chasm in me and as the immediate grief subsides, I look at what remains, and I count myself blessed to have a family that comes to me in my times of need, friends who have been so kind ot me, new people who have not shied away from the awkwardness of someone who has lost her greatest love, and even plants and animals, who just keep being so vibrantly alive.

Tags: rosie

I'm going to go ahead and say it: graduation is way too long. I think that if people would allow me to make a few edits, we could be in and out of there in under two hours. If it were much shorter than that, then it would lose that gravitas, but after the first hour, everyone's butt starts to go numb. You can shift a few times in your closely spaced seats, but after that, it's a losing battle.

As we pushed our way through the various speakers, I started listing the items I would remove if I were princess of the world of graduation.

First, the president would get *one* chance to speak. ONE speech. You can pack everything into that one shot at the microphone and, other than that, you would shake the 1800+ hands and do that little formal, "I present the class of two thousand elebenty whatever" and the "I accept this class bla bla bla I now present your college graduates!" but that's it.

Instead, we get a "Welcome and Comments," an "Introduction of Speaker," and "Closing Remarks." TOO MUCH.

Second, there would be no "Salutations and Acknowledgments" from the Chair of the Board of Trustees. That's just muckety mucks gladhanding other muckety mucks, and we don't need it. Basically, if you're going to recognize anyone already sitting on the stage, you're out of luck. Walking up with everyone standing, being led by some kid holding some golden talisman of Importance, being the last to enter and the first to leave, that's your recognition. We're celebrating the students, not the Board of Trustees.

If your future Invited Speakers are as nice as this one, Charles M. Blow, then fine, let's have our guest speaker.

Finally, we don't need to hear from any representative of the Alumni Association. I'm sure the graduates will hear plenty from those folk in the future. How about a little something in the program from them instead? Or an award they could co-sponsor with the Board of Trustees? (I have a proposed award at the end of this little graduation review).

The reading of the names is the longest part. Keep every part of it. Read every name. THAT's what everyone is there for: to hear their loved one's name spoken out loud, to see their loved one smile and wave to the crowd. That all stays.

I would add one more event to graduation: a special prize for the best pair of shoes. The shoes this year were stunning - the footwear equivalent to the sort of hat a person might wear to a royal wedding. In a sea of people all wearing the same robe, those shoes were flashes of individuality, flair, a glittery, spiked-heel, elaborate reminder that graduation is such a golden moment for our students, and they deserve a day about them and their awesome achievement.

Tags: up the down staircase

Easter, for me, is the time when all my friends go off the grid. Well, not all my friends, but it sometimes feels that way. I always forget it's coming because my family never celebrated it (no Easter eggs, no Easter dinner, no church visits that I remember). We celebrated Christmas, but that was it. One year, when I was about ten, I decided to go and hide my own chocolate eggs and then invited everyone to find them, including me. Just awhile back, I saw some people with smudges on their foreheads and had to run through all possible explanations before thinking, isn't there something connected to a day? What day is it? Wednesday -- ahh: Ash Wednesday. Then there are the palm fronds and then Easter. It takes me a minute to work through the events that lead to violent death and miraculous resurrection.

I think one reason why I always forget what for Christians is the most important event of all is that its very existence upsets my sensibilities. Granted, I've chosen to be an atheist (on ethical grounds), so I'm not one to judge the events of other people's religions, but I've always thought that Jesus was remarkable for the way he lived his life -- boldly, kindly, generously -- rather than for the way he died or because he may or may not have come back after his death. Being torture-executed is not what makes a person great. It's those little things he did before everything turned violent that move me when I think about Jesus. And I guess I've always thought about the story of his return as a commentary on grief and about the way our minds give us merciful moments when we almost think the beloved is returned to us once again. His return, in my imagination, is like that moment after the three days of hard, mind-numbing, skin-burning grief when you remember the lost love without pain and know that he'll be there with you as an idea, even if his living body is gone.

But then Easter morning comes up and I usually have the same sort of thought: I wonder what it would be like to wake up in a dark cave, shut in with a boulder after a public torture execution? What would it be like to wake up and, for just a moment, not know who you are or why you're there. Then it would come back to you: the flogging, the crown, the dragging, the nails in hands and feet, and the slow death of asphyxiation, all those people just watching. And you would slowly realize that, now, you have to summon the strength to move that boulder and gather yourself and walk back out into the world you half expected to lose forever. There would be all the amazement and celebration and wonderment and all the explaining. It must have been a very lonely moment to be back in a world to which you no longer really belong.

When I imagine this moment, and the moments that preceded it, I realize again how often our miracles require the lonely suffering of others.

And so on Easter mornings like today, when the air was soft and warm and gentle and everything smelled alive and green, I like to imagine that if Jesus really did die and come back for three more days in the crazy, cruel world he had left so violently, he was greeted with a day much like today.

Tags: personal philosophy

I taught my last class of the semester yesterday. I really liked that class, but I was ready to be done. Next week, they have exams and then I have to grade the exams, but then I get a few weeks off before I begin summer school. During that time, I really need to work on this talk I'm giving in the end of June.

Instead, I watch a lot of Scrubs on netflix (I just started season three) and go to Susan's house for dinner, and try to talk myself into a more steady frame of mind. That requires a lot of effort.

I've continued to go to the barn to help with horsecare, but started taking weekends off (unless Shannon's on call or they need me to cover). Jill just offered to cover my Tuesday morning feed, since she goes to the barn to ride anyway. I felt ambivalent about going down to three days, but realized I really need those extra mornings to work on that talk, particularly since my brain remains so muddy.

I've also been thinking a lot about fostering a rescued horse. I contacted the woman who writes Fugly Horse of the Day, and she recommended Angel Acres. I'm not sure if they're looking for foster homes, and I wouldn't be able to foster a horse until July at the earliest, but I wrote the woman who runs it to see if fostering is even a possibility. I can't imagine adopting another horse right now, but I think Rosie would like me helping a horse in distress get fat and healthy.

Just about everything in my life is in a holding pattern these days. I don't know what's going to happen with various friends whose lives are in states of flux, and I don't know what will happen next for me. I sure wish I could know that everything's going to be ok.

My therapist says that the usual rule is: no big decisions for three months after a big loss. He's right, even as I want to grasp at anything I can to focus my attention away from Rosie's empty stall.

I'm in a sort of emotional quarantine. It's a limbo state where I want to get out as quickly as possible even as I don't want to stop grieving, because doing so would mean that Rosie's really gone and I'm really moving on with my life.

But that's just another one of those things I can't actually control. If you were to add up all the things I can't control, it would be a very long list. I try to remind myself of that every few minutes. Most things in our lives are beyond our control, and when I look back at my life, I realize how much of my unhappiness came from my refusal to acknowledge such things. So there's another gift Rosie gave me when she drew her last breath: she showed me how much I really can't control, no matter how ardently I beg the universe for things to be otherwise.

The only way to guarantee things will slip through your fingers is to grasp at them. So as hard as it is, I hold my hands open and watch some things wax and some things wane and try to be ok despite it all.

In "Mirrorings," Lucy Grealy wrote:

"I once thought that truth was eternal, that when you understood something it was with you forever. I know now that this isn’t so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things."

I try to keep those two sentences in my mind. Quarantine isn't lost time; it's time that hones the jagged edges into something smooth and manageable. It is not a time where one waits, even though it feels like all I'm doing is waiting to be ok. It's a time where I pull out the sharp edges in my heart and smooth them so that, someday, I can emerge back in the world even a little more whole than I was with Rosie by my side.

Tags: rosie

The grief is always just around the corner. I can feel it, lurking.

People have been so kind to me; that has held me up. I still need to write about some of the wonderful ways people have been there for me.

For the past two days, I've managed to stay on a pretty even keel. That's my goal: nothing too extreme, don't dwell on thoughts that will push you into grief and panic, have my feet "go mechanical around," as Emily Dickinson put it, "on ground, or air, or ought"

The thing is, doing what my body wants to do -- collapse, sob, lie there as vacant as I can be -- doesn't help me, doesn't help Rosie. It surely won't show anyone any more clearly the certainty and clarity of my love for her. So instead, I try to keep my grief this cold thing lodged deep in the bottom of the lake. The rest, I let ripple across the surface.

But I feel like my mind is in a split screen. One side is me, going through the day, being functional and doing the things I need to do. The other one is me, still trapped in the moment when I realized that this immense being I loved with all my heart for more than half my life was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it.

I didn't cry at that moment. Noises came out of me and there were not noises I'd ever heard come out of me before. I could hear myself making them, but I wasn't crying.

And then I heard Shannon walk into the barn just after Rosie had stopped breathing and I had my head on her shoulder and my arms around her neck, and that's when I could feel myself start to cry. The primal moment of absolute grief had passed.

It returned at 5 that morning. I was crawling around my bed on my hands and knees, making little noises and feeling my skin burn, and then I was sobbing while my mother held me and my sister rubbed my back. And then the valium kicked in and I slept.

The moments after are less terrifying, because the other parts of my brain started functioning. But they are more complicated because I'm aware of myself and the people around me. I'm watching myself grieve and I'm watching myself function at the same time that I am still trapped in that moment of absolute panic and grief.

And I know that this respite is going to pass and it's going to hurt and I'm going to have to continue to do what I'm doing now: survive, find moments of grace, look at all the people who have reached out to help carry me through the parts I cannot survive on my own.

I know we all suffer losses, and they are all terrible. And I suspect I should lock this post because it shows the ugliness of my aching heart, but I see no reason to be ashamed. I loved Rosie for twenty-two years and now she's gone, and it hurts so absolutely, even as I muddle along through the rest of the days of my life.

Tags: rosie

Grace lost her bootie today, so I walked around the field to find it. A woman drove by and paused to open her window. "I'm afraid to ask this," she started, and I said, "yes, Rosie died on Friday."

"My daughters and I were so worried that's what happened," she told me. "We hoped she was just in a different field. We really loved Rosie." It turns out this woman had been visiting Rosie when she walked her dogs. Rosie would come to the fence line and visit with this friend I never even knew she had.

Then, Kermit came up to me in the field. He put his head up against my chest and just held it there. Kermit never does stuff like that. He also isn't that keen on getting lots of petting, but he let me stroke his neck and face and we just stood there. After he returned to his grass and I started to walk away, he came up to me and did it again. He misses his friend. We offered each other condolences.

Since Rosie died, so many people have come out of the woodwork to reflect back my love for Rosie. Strangers I never knew have told me they read my blog to find out about Rosie. A friend's sister wrote me a long email about the death of her own horse and about how she had been keeping up with Rosie through her sister.

I realized today that Rosie has been my friend for more than half of my life. Twenty-two years, we were together one way or another. That is longer than any relationship with anyone not in my immediate family. But I'm not the only one who feels her loss. Rosie was a tough girl and she touched and inspired more people than I had ever realized.

And that's the second unexpected gift in this painful time: Rosie was loved; Rosie moved people; I wasn't the only one who saw her magic. She was just herself and people loved her for it.

Tags: rosie

I went to the barn for the first time since Rosie died. I wanted to see the horses and I told Shannon and Jill that I would continue to do the weekday feeds and be available to cover on weekends. I can't leave them in the lurch, but I also realized that I couldn't imagine not seeing Grace, Kermit, Sasha, and Bella regularly. I loved Rosie with the absolute certainty of gravity, but those other horses - I love them too.

It was like seeing horses with new eyes, or with the eyes I had in childhood but had forgotten about until that moment. The horses were these breathing miracles, the sun shining through Kermit's long winter coat, causing it to shimmer in a fuzzy halo, Grace's almost-black solidity and chiseled head, Sasha's dramatic head tossing and prancing, Bella's determination to get that bit of grass almost out of reach on the other side of the fence -- I saw it all as if for the first time. It's not that I'd forgotten, exactly, but I had let that amazement fade to the back of my mind as I focused on keeping the barn clean and the horses safe and healthy.

After I took my first riding lesson, I remember kneeling by the pony who had trotted me patiently around the ring as I tried to post and slowly brushing her legs, transfixed by their delicate perfection. When I first met Rosie, I was again transfixed by the intricate perfection of her body. I daydreamed about her, examined her every detail, tried to memorize her.

And then there were the recent years, with their medical dramas and terrifying injuries; there were the possible surgeries to face; there was the not-knowing if she'd ever recover fully. There was also the petty stuff that comes up when three women share the enormous job of tending to our creatures. And today, when I saw the horses with the eye of a ten year old girl for the first time in years, all of the rest of it fell away.

I never expected that gift amidst sorrow that has buckled my legs and woken me up in the middle of the night in a full-fledged panic attack. I never expected to smell hay or see little flowers growing or admire the glory of horses, and losing Rosie woke me up both to what I lost and to how lucky I was to have had it in the first place.

Tags: rosie

My dearest Rosie died very suddenly last night. I was there with her and could tell her how much I loved her as she drew her last breaths. This morning, she was buried beside Satin. I'm here with my mother and sister. It was a very rough night. I'll write more later. For now, it's all I can say just to tell you that I lost someone I loved with the absolute certainty of gravity. Without her, I don't know what to do.

Tags: rosie

Originally posted by kylecassidy at post