POW-MIA

Drowning in deadlines, packing and unpacking as I slowly move in with BMG, spending computer time managing Weight Watchers and reconnecting with friends and family on Facebook - all of these activities have distracted me from my "being". GPA recently asked, "How ARE you?" "Uh, I have absolutely no idea how I am. What I do know is I am 100% disconnected from myself right now."

What does it look like to be so distracted from the very fact of "being" in this world?

I woke up sans alarm this morning and headed straight to the kitchen to make a small pot of my precious espresso. ("Oh Bialetti! Is there anything you CAN'T do?") Instead of starting the coffee, a 90-second process, I started putting away the groceries that had been sitting on the counter since Thursday morning at 6:30 AM when Peapod delivered. But I needed to put some excess PowerAde (BMG's drink of choice - flavor "blue" is the fave) into grocery overflow on top of the fridge, and I needed to rearrange the mound of stuff on top of the refrigerator in order to make room for what looks like 20 oz. bottles of blue energy drink. So I head into the pantry to grab the step stool. Oh, right, the pantry is a mess. So I pull out (a) an industrial sized package of aluminum foil, (b) a wiffle bat, (c) and the garbage can with a 1/2 cup of dog food in it from good 'ol days now 2.5 years passed when a Black Lab puppy lived here and start rearranging things to make room for the food processor and crock pot that now live here. "Oh, I should start my coffee!" I head out of the pantry and remember the point of the pantry rearranging was to get the step stool so I could put away the PowerAde. So, I pull the step stool from the garage sale pile and start putting away the PowerAde. When that is done I think to myself, "I guess I'll just finish putting away the rest of the groceries" which involves clearing off the counter. To do this I consolidate two cups of pens on the counter, put cookbooks I don't use in the garage sale pile, and start the dishwasher (Whoops! Forgot to do that last night!). Then, and only then, do I start my coffee.

And with the coffee started, I head to the couch, turn on my iTunes, and start listening to my informal break-up play list created three years ago when GO and I called it quits. "Why am I doing this?" I think to myself as Big Head Todd and the Monsters tell the melancholy story of living with someone you don't love any more. (At least not in that giddy or comfortable way.) "Do I need to cry?" I probably need to cry - there is no doubt about that. But this isn't why I'm listening to break-up music. Hmmm. I keep blogging.

I take a blogging break and head into the bathroom, where my eye catches a disparate montage of silly creatures and vacation mementos and displayed on a shelf above the toilet. Wooden ducks, rubber ducks, Eiffel towers and ninja figurines are among the characters who populate our bathroom. BMG and I frequently rearrange these items, hiding them around the house in unlikely places to surprise one another. (Imagine the gales of laughter when someone finds an army of plastic ninjas hiding in the center tube of a roll of toilet paper, or opens the refrigerator and finds a paddle of ducks waddling towards the beer.) On the shelf today I see a German egg cup in the shape of a boy. He wears a knit cap (ostensibly to make a fashion statement while keeping the egg warm) and is very cute in a retro kind of way. Next to him, like a faithful companion, is a troll dressed as an angel. I start crying. More with relief than sadness. Seeing those toys on the shelf, BMG and me side by side, reminds me that I want a genuine life with BMG, an honest life, a silly life, a loving life. GO and I had a good life, and we had all the trappings of our cohort - the right vegetarian cookbooks on the shelf, the vermicompost bin as coffee table that was the envy of our hippie friends, and the outdoor gear neatly stowed away for quick get-aways to the mountains where we would pack-in, pack-out reliant only on our hip and expensive Nalgene bottles to get us through. But it wasn't a genuine life, at least not for me.

I looked at the angel troll again and thought of the Hindu goddess Kali - the mother/destroyer. "That is more like me," I think. Loving, nurturing, murdering, fierce - and everything in-between. I am a whole package - not just environmentally conscious camper. I like to watch TV shows about morbidly obese people and I recycle (almost) religiously, I trance dance and ride on the back of a scooter wearing a pink helmet, I am a conservatively dressed professional and a gal who likes to show off her best assets, I long distance bike and I play Nintendo with great abandon. I am everything. I am not MIA. In fact, I am everywhere.