Hi. How are you doing? I haven’t posted for a while because honestly, I don’t know what to say. There is a vast empty space where coherent thoughts used to be, a gaping hole in my ability to make sense of the world. It is as if I’ve completed most of the puzzle and can almost make out an image, but for the life of me can’t find the last few pieces —the dog must have ate them or they fell into the dark abyss we keep underneath the couch.
Yet today is the last day of another apocalyptic year and I feel compelled to write at least something. Which is weird because I haven’t been writing. I have no desire to write lately. No desire to do anything but sit on the couch, pet my dog and look out the window. But here I am. Writing. I feel I have something very important to say, something to plead and beg and make you see, but I can’t seem to dredge it up from the quick sand that has become my heart.
If I concentrate really hard though, I hear David Bowie singing:
Keep coming up with love but it’s so slashed and torn
Why, why, why?
Love, love, love, love, love
Yeah. That about sums it up. Listening to the song now, I remember those days when the girls were young and the pressure of life was building and to diffuse it we would dance the pressure down. The girls hopping around like methed-up jack rabbits to love, love, love, love and J getting into it with hopping zombie kicks and sudden vogue stops. Clasping each other’s hands and twirling the girls so fast it felt we could launch them into orbit. I remember the pressure magically transformed to laughter, to pile-ups on the floor, to tickles and bear hugs and …well, love.
After this inconceivable year, all I can come up with, the only thing that enters my brain is love. There would not be so much grief if there were not so much love. We would not hurt so much if we didn’t love so much.
Insanity laughs under pressure we’re breaking
Can’t we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can’t we give love that one more chance?
Why can’t we give love, give love, give love, give love
Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?
Can’t we give ourselves one more chance? Yes please. Just one more, k? My heart is breaking for just one more chance.
One of the strange silver linings of this incredibly fucked up tragedy that I can still not really name (I don’t want, don’t make me) is that I did get one more chance— I found part of my family again, people that have been scattered through time and space have come back together. We are in each other’s lives again and it is a delicate, fragile thing, as well as a great responsibility. We are older now and so much more wounded. The lessons we have learned have been hard won and we have not come out of them unscathed. We limp towards each other with limbs missing, greet each other with broken teeth smiles. But the best thing about people who have known you for a long time is that despite the scars, the bruises and the missing parts, they still recognize you. They knew who you were before the train of life ran you over and can see you through the tread marks.
I am grateful for that one more chance though I am greedy and would have liked…would have liked…Regret is not a strong enough word for this.
But even regret is about love, or loving badly. I regret that I did not know how to love better.
‘Cause love’s such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love (people on streets) dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure
This is ourselves under pressure. And we can be beautiful still, and we can put down our armour and our weapons and we can stop hurting each other in the name of love. I really believe that. In fact I am going to dedicate this next half of my life to studying how to love better, how to connect better, how to help all of us get that one more chance. This is my new mission. First step: I start a masters in counselling program in January.
So, happy new year everyone. In 2022, I dare us all to change our way of caring about ourselves because this is indeed our last dance and everything, everything hinges upon our ability to do so.
I leave you with love. Just love, even if it is slashed and torn.
Lina Branter 