On the Backs of Mistakes
This week I had writing groups with people interested in learning from me and one another, poems in my inbox, sunny days, Cinnamon Toast Crunch on sale at the grocery store. I hung out with friends and family, made it to yoga, wrote some things. Kids snuggled beside me. My apartment is clean. I did the laundry. I got paid. All the ingredients that should me feel really solid and grounded were there. But this week there was a darkness and self-doubt that clouded my flow. Darkness has a source as surely as light does. And it takes a lot more to put it out. It’s not at all like blowing out a candle, it’s more like uprooting something that keeps trying to grab you. As I wrote about it and tried to find the source of my particular darkness, I realized that I’ve woken to nasty emails from my ex-husband many mornings this week. And while I don’t really believe the things he says about me, I am susceptible to them; they burrow into my psyche, remind me of that powerless self doubt, the person I used to be, the mistakes I’ve made. And when I have to respond (because amid all the nastiness are real things we have to discuss as coparents) I find myself doing that old balancing act of trying to being true to myself and standing my ground but also trying not to make him angrier because we are so intertwined, and I know how willing he can be to feed his own flesh to the fire of his anger, how if I let myself be lost in the vortex, I can become charred myself.
I’m not telling you this so that you can be angry on my behalf, tell me that I’m none of the things he says I am. My sister already did that. I am writing this to remind you, and myself, that the mistakes we’ve made will continue to rise on occasion, will continue to be a source of darkness, and our work will often be writing to discover which of our many mistakes is darkening our minds today. My poet friend Shomriel (you’ve heard tell of her) sent me the poem below in the middle of the week. “You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,” is your starting line. Set a timer for 20 minutes and write. Discover the source(s)) of your darkness, and continue the long work of putting it out, or at least containing it. It’s long, difficult work, that will leave you scratched and bruised and tired. It’s your life’s work. And mine.
Best of luck, my dears. I’m with you.
Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.
