Weird

Dear God,

When I write to you, I am writing to the flowers, the sky, the ocean, my daughter, myself.

I want to ask you what I’m supposed to do. I feel cast out, unmoored in space, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do as a solo person in space.

The books I read, the movies I watch, the people I know, all talk about home. There is a line between people that connects them, that lets them know they are alive, real. This line turns into language and love and food and the ability to know home and go there..

What is a person to do if they don’t have the connecting line?

How can I speak to another and be understood? How can I receive nourishment?

When Alfonso Cuarón wanted to make a movie about being alone, he came up with the idea of putting his character out into space, unmoored, tethered to nothing.

When the cord was cut between my body and my mother’s body, I went into deep space, and I was alone because no one around me could see the isolation. What others saw of my life and what I experienced were planets apart.

I had a boyfriend who used to call me weird. I should have walked away the first time because it wasn’t said as a compliment. If what makes me different is judged as less than, than I, logically, am less than also. When you are unmoored you are weightless and less than is not what you need. You (I) need anchors.

What if he had said “You are beautiful” instead of “You are weird” the times I confused him? He would have been feeding me.

What kindness!

I know he was frightened. I know that what made us different was threatening to him. What if I disappeared? What if I didn’t understand him? What if he had made a bad choice? What if he got rotten fruit instead of a girlfriend? What else was I capable of doing? Just how weird was I?

I find the best people to spend my time with are the ones who enjoy all I do. They watch, they listen, they talk, and they don’t try to control or even fully understand. They just take it all in.

When I approach the two giant cedars in the front yard, I don’t try to understand them. Instead, I open my heart, my self, and I try to take them in, try to feel them, to be cedar. It feels delicious. My analytical brain can take a break. I’m not doing. I’m being.

And I’m not asking anything of the cedar other than to be here, also.

I wrote this because I felt lost after yet another person said they didn’t understand me and that how I behave is strange. I am so weary of having judgmental words used to describe me and my actions.

I can hear you tell me to stop paying attention to what makes me weary.

Thank you.

I can do that.