the level 3 bird

subterranean songbird seeking the sky

[level3bird]

My son got married last weekend on the shore of Lake Michigan.

I was not there.

From Instagram and Facebook posts, it looks like it was a lovely, homespun ceremony perfectly suited to my son and his new bride. It was the simple kind of wedding they would have wanted even if COVID-19 wasn’t a thing.

My son hasn’t spoken to me in over a year. Over the last 12-13 years, I’ve probably talked to him a handful of times. That’s not how I ever wanted it.

It is perhaps the most painful, heartbreaking circumstance in my life. And if you know anything about my life, that’s saying something. It never gets easier.

I message him every month or so. I reach out and say hello, wish him a Happy Birthday, a Merry Christmas, tell him his dogs are getting so big, that the snow in Montana looks lovely, that I hope he likes having chickens, that university is going well. I tell him I love him. I say that I miss him. I apologise, again and again.

I don’t hear back. He rarely reads the messages.

My heart breaks to the ever-present ‘delivered’ tick-mark.

Every now and then his lovely new bride will message me. We’ll chat for a moment or two. I wish her well. I try to use sheer will in my words to convey how much I love my son. How much I wish I could be a part of his life.

I don’t know him, really, this grown man who has buried me while I am still alive.

I know of him.

My son, the one who shows up in my dreams, is the 13 year old boy who was taken away from this addict to go live with his father.

The boy that lives in my memory still wears his American Idiot t-shirt, his nails painted black, stands next to a replica of Excalibur hanging on his wall, a Lego battleship atop his dresser. That boy set fires beside the house with his best mate. He sits on the sofa with me binge watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 24. We sing out loud, we laugh until we fall out in fits.

That boy talked to me about everything. Told me he’d always be my best buddy. 

He cried when I argued with my parents. He visited me in rehab and told me how I’d ruined his life because I was broken. He said I’d broken him.

I’ve been clean now 11 years, 7 months and 2 days. I’ve tried almost all of these years to make things better. To make amends. Over and over and over.

I will keep trying. How can I not?

He recently told me that he’s been in therapy since he left the Marine Corps. He said that his therapist explained that he is the way he is because of me.

It never fails to cut to the bone.

Maybe it is true. His experience is his experience and he feels that I fucked him up. I cannot dispute his truth. I can only try to take responsibility for my own fucked-up-ness, apolgise, accept that he wants, he needs, space between us.

I would have given anything to have seen him marry. I would give anything to hear a hello, to see a ‘hey, mom’ pop up on my phone.

Instead, I will wish him all the happiness and joy that he can muster in his life. I will save Facebook photos, send the messages that will remain unread, and I will hold him in my heart.

I will wait and I will cry and I will love him.

I will hope and I will try not to hope.

[iwasjustdrinking]

In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness. Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory. I’ve told these stories to the best of my ability with all the love, wonder, and whimsy they deserve. Now it’s up to you to pass them down.

[level3bird]

Totally a mood and I’m swimming in it. #sogood 

[isay]

Hey you. Thank you.

There are times when it’s hard to be half a world away. I spoke to my mother last night and unfortunately got some sad news, her husband Peter is in hospital and not expected to live.

My mother and Peter’s life together might be considered a bit scandalous in some quarters, this is largely to do with the fact that Peter, as well as being my stepfather, is also my uncle, as he was previously married to my mother’s sister. Sharp intake of breath eh? Anyway after they pretty much eloped to be together in their mid-sixties they’ve been inseparable ever since.

They are both now approaching ninety and the perhaps inevitable physical decline of the last couple of years is really taking a toll. Peter is now in hospital with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and is not expected to last too much longer. My mother is putting as brave a face as she can on what’s happening right now but I know she is scared of losing the man she’s loved for a lot longer than the twenty some years that they have actually been able to be together.

For all his faults, and Peter does have quite a few, he has always made my mother feel loved and valued and treasured. They are two old people who like many of their generation perhaps long for a time that never actually was but regardless of that they have spent the years that they have had together, and those were hard fought for as the fallout from their decision to be together took quite a toll on both sides of the family.

Earlier this year Kim and I came very close to separating, but at the eleventh hour we both resolved to give things another go. There are no guarantees in life but so far things have been much better between us and we are both trying much harder to be the people we need to be for each other and for ourselves. Part of that for me is not taking things for granted and right now while things are unfolding overseas I am grateful for the support and love that Kim has for me.

In our own way we have had to fight very hard to be together and staying together, for it to be worthwhile requires effort, but something which I am rediscovering is how good putting in that effort and seeing the results of it can be. Sometimes it is hard to go through life and not allow ‘life’ to get in the way, that is something I have been guilty of for far too long but is something I am trying to remedy. Sorry if this all sounds a bit cryptic, what is important is that we are both making the effort and putting in the work and we are beginning to see some encouragement from doing so.

We’ve just moved to a place on the outskirts of Melbourne, the far edge of the commuter belt, somewhere I would always have resisted before. But being away from town and on the edge of the country has so far been a respite, its quiet and slower paced, the commute is no worse than our previous location and the house we are in has come together nicely. On the commute we frequently see kangaroos as we go through country roads before hitting the freeway and this morning we even saw an emu strutting in a paddock and the sky was a bright pink as dawn broke.

Despite being so far away from my mother at this time I felt truly grateful to be here this morning as the sun came up on the commute at 6.30am, more than anything I’m glad I got to be with Kim and that we both took a chance when it would have been so easy for us to have not to. I know that I am loved and it is humbling, I hope to prove that I am worthy.

I love you Kim.

[level3bird]

I love you too! 

Love is tough. And messy. It is brilliantly beautiful and heart-breakingly brutal. But it is worth it. You are worth it.

Here’s to our continued acts of courage and vulnerability with each other. 

Here’s to women, like your mother, like my daughter, (and even, like me) who walk away from the expected life for their true one, who risk it all for love and who thrive because of it. 

Here’s to those of us, all of us, who are willing to fight, tooth and nail, for what matters, even when it would have been easier to leave.

Here’s to people who stay when it is challenging or painful or when love asks us to step up. 

I wouldn’t have my life any other way and I still choose you. 

[level3bird]

Gemini Horoscope for week of March 21, 2019

“I urge you to locate a metaphorical or very literal door that will give you access to a place that affords you more freedom and healing and support. Maybe you already know about the existence of this door—or maybe it's not yet on your radar. Here's advice from Clarissa Pinkola Éstes that might help. "If you have a deep scar, that is a door," she writes. "If you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much that you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”

Rob Brezsney, Freewill Astrology 

[level3bird]

Can you die of disappointment and a broken heart? Sadness?

Asking for a friend.

[talltattooedtexasgirl]

four little words

He said, “I’ll be your witness.”

Such a loving thing to say.

[level3bird]

this is going to sting a while

Getting into my archive from 10 years ago.

Sweet posts. Hopeful words. Sadness and longing.

The people we were then. The ones we are today. 

Life has its way with you. We change.  

[somnolentdesolation]

In the end, this is all that really matters.

[talltattooedtexasgirl]

Meet me half way

[level3bird]

(via talltattooedtexasgirl)

All I’ve ever wanted.

[talltattooedtexasgirl]

Under the Southern Cross

It is the middle of the night where you are. And I’m missing you terribly already.

I’m staring out the window of the lounge here at LAX. Not really looking at anything.

I’m preoccupied. Can’t stop thinking about this past week with you.

Thinking about the duvet, all those kisses, the hours spent inside, my new tattoo, conversations on the rooftop, your eyes, the way you smelled when I hid my face in your shoulder, you wiping the tears from my cheek before I had to leave, that last glimpse of you as I turned the corner at security.

I’m thinking about the future, riding the tram to class and then back home to you. The sound of that. Home. Back home with you. The way I’ve always felt displaced until we were together. I’ve never felt safer than when you wrapped your arms around me. When you woke me from a bad dream and held me and told me that everything would be ok.

I told you once, when I borrowed from that Indigo Girls song, that love was a kindness I’d never known before. Now I know. And I will never be the same again.

I’ve been waiting all my life for you to find me. I’m so glad you finally did and I wouldn’t change a single thing that brought me to this moment.

There is so much I want to say. There just aren’t words to do it justice. But one of the things I love about you is that you know without my saying anything.

I’ll miss the Southern Cross in the night sky. I’m already missing holding your hand. I’m hopeful though. We can do this. And I’m looking forward to that one way ticket home.

Me

[level3bird]

Ten years ago today, I met Tim. It was my first trip to Australia.

We spent less than a week together.

Reading this old post made me cry. 

It was one of the happiest times of my life. 

[poemswords]

[level3bird]

All the way down - Once OST

You have broken me all the way down,  down upon my knees. 

And you have broken me all the way down, you'll be the last, you'll see. 

...

And what chance have we got when you've missed every shot for me? 

[gr1d]

Visit Original Link

We took two weeks in the Bahamas. Went out dancing every night. Tried to fight the creeping sense of dread with temporal things. Most of the time I guess I felt alright. But I wanted you to love me like you used to do.

[level3bird]

We were the one thing in the galaxy God didn't have his eyes on.

Jenny, The Mountain Goats

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for, and to do it so unconsciously.

Haruki Murakami (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[level3bird]

breathing under water

I built my house by the sea. Not on the sands, mind you; not on the shifting sand. And I built it of rock.

A strong house by a strong sea. And we got well acquainted, the sea and I. Good neighbors. Not that we spoke much. We met in silences. Respectful, keeping our distance, but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand. Always, the fence of sand our barrier, always, the sand between.

And then one day, -and I still don’t know how it happened - the sea came. Without warning.

Without welcome, even Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand like wine, less like the flow of water than the flow of blood. Slow, but coming. Slow, but flowing like an open wound. And I thought of flight and I thought of drowning and I thought of death. And while I thought the sea crept higher, til it reached my door. And I knew, then, there was neither flight, nor death, nor drowning. That when the sea comes calling, you stop being neighbors, Well acquainted, friendly-at-a-distance neighbors, And you give your house for a coral castle, And you learn to breathe underwater.

Sr. Carol Bieleck, RSCJ from an unpublished work

[level3bird]

Yeah, don’t think I’m going to feel safe ever again.