Fall-ing

(coolest tattoo ever "hopedreamperseverebreatheloveseehear" and to have it on your wrist...also the best suicide prevention ever.)

It’s overcast this morning and that should make me happy- relief from the 110 degree weather we had last week, but instead it fills me with that Fall sense of gloom and doom. I envy you Fall-lovers who rejoice at the change of seasons, the howling winds, the long dark nights. Those of you who grow your own pumpkins and love apple cider and the smell of sharpened pencils on the first day of school.

As I watch the leaves wither up and die, I often feel a foreshadowing sense of my own death, or maybe there’s a part of me that dies in Fall. Fall is flu season and fire season, the time I become pent up and pensive. I lied in bed this morning watching an old Tennessee Williams flick, which certainly didn’t help matters. Somebody stop me before I pull The Bell Jar from my bookshelf. Friends don’t let friends read Sylvia Plath in the Fall.

Speaking of friends, Amy Ferris challenged me to make three miracles happen this week, and I’m stumped. My mind is blank. Well, it isn’t actually blank. I met with Cindy yesterday who just finished reading my manuscript. We spent hours talking about our lives. It took me writing a book for us to realize how much we have in common, more than we knew after years of close friendship. We didn’t talk as much about the book as we did about life, and that in a way is a good sign. If a person can read my book and relate to it, know she isn’t alone, that so many of us have carried common burdens in silence…then there is a reason for me having lived this life, and written this book, which means there is a reason to publish. And THAT is what’s really on my mind this morning and probably why I’m feeling so gloomy.

Rufus Wainwright’s “Dinner at Eight” is playing over and over in my head. It’s a song about his tortured relationship with his father that breaks my heart anew every time I hear it. His lazy, sorrowful voice drones on, “No matter the cost, I’m gonna take you down with one little stone, I’m gonna break you down and see what you’re worth, what you’re really worth to me.” And by the end of the song I am bawling my eyes out, because that is me. I am David, my mother- Goliath, looming tall and indestructible, untouchable, silencing me all these years. But I hold this little stone in my hand, the slingshot in my pocket. One little stone….truth. I could let it sail, and it could destroy her. Or maybe, hopefully, not. She’s pretty damned strong. Taking her down was never my intention, in fact it's the last thing I'd want. I can change all the names, all the identifying characteristics and still I know the truth will burn through and hurt us all. But God I've got to release this stone. I can’t walk through life any longer with the weight and responsibility of it. If I just put it in my slingshot and send it hurling out into the universe… anything could happen, and can I live with that?

Harriet Beecher Stowe once said, “The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.” But still I wonder….

(and do I think it is a coincidence that I met Troy's client Marc this morning- who happened to have the worlds' best tattoo? No, I do not. Thanks Marc Acito who by the way also has the coolest blog ever http://marcacito.blogspot.com/. )