Femme Flavor

The time has come. I have finally decided to face my demons and excise a toxic component from my life.

I have deactivated my Facebook account.

I don’t know if I’ll reactivate it Monday, or next Friday, or on my birthday just so I don’t miss out on the 200 wall posts from people who wouldn’t remember if they didn’t have a little notification in the corner of the page. This is said without judgment, since I am shit at remembering birthdays, and shun the whole Facebook birthday thang on principle – if I don’t remember, you have the right to know it and chew me out for it (goodnaturedly). Fb makes it so you have no idea who would remember if the site didn’t make it easy. But I digress.

Mostly, y’all, I’m tired. So. Fucking. Tired. Tired of putting my own energy into tracking what others are up to. Tired of trying to be clever or provocative or vulnerable enough to elicit a few comments or “likes.” Tired of the bullshit drama that accompanies having a profile – no matter how “locked down” it seems to be.

I’m done. And honestly, I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. I resisted joining fb in the first place, finally doing so to keep in touch with folks back home in Portland after I’d been in SF for a while.

I’d really rather talk to you, friend. Text, email, phone – hell, maybe even face to face. Just you and me, and our relationship to one another, without any concern for how it affects anyone else.

Will you read this? Ironically, probably not, since you likely only see it through the links I post on Facebook – it hasn’t been the only source, but it has certainly delivered the greatest percentage of readers. But you know what? I’d rather ten readers who either seek out my page or stumble upon it than ten thousand who don’t get a damned thing out of it. So, to those of you who see this, thank you. You are why I’m here. Well, you and the fact that if I don’t write somewhere, I’ll end up either —- shit, business site. Right. Never you mind, carry on…. Ahem. Goodnight, dear readers. And thank you for being here with me.

The fact is, I don’t get enough of it. And as I am not free to work a schedule that accommodates my bat-like ways, I have to work extra hard to go to bed at an hour that allows me to get up without feeling like I just laid down. I haven’t yet figured out the best combination of factors to maintain this elusive new sleep pattern, but I also haven’t tried very hard. The thing is, I love nighttime. I love everything about it. Everything about nature feels closer and more alive in the relative quiet of night, thunder and lightning can hardly put on as spectacular a show during the day, the scents of flowers and cut grass and the ocean all seem tangible when they are not overpowered by the things we can see.

But, I need to be a better school night sleeper and that means I’m going to bed right now, aided by wonder drugs and a week of cumulative shitty sleep nights. This is gonna be awesome. Sweetest dreams, loves. Hey, does the emoji keyboard work here? Hmph, nope. Well it’s too bad, because I used very cute pictures to tell a story about bedtime for penguin. Now the world will be a slightly sadder place for the absence of emoji storytelling.

Um yeah, it’s sleep time.

There are lots of great songs about rain. That’s even the name of one of them. Maybe I’ll make a rain playlist. But really, the rain is its own soundtrack, the uneven patter of larger drips from the roof overpowering but not entirely drowning out the steady but gentle beat on the sidewalk and street.

Most of the time, I find it soothing. Tonight, I’m not sure yet. I want it to be, but something is tugging at me, telling me I don’t get to have peace and calm. I haven’t earned it. And maybe that’s true. I’ve been shirking on my personal work, and haven’t taken great care of myself for a while. I hadn’t been called out on it until tonight, so I guess this is a confession of sorts, and also an apology. I’m going to try to get on a bit of a real schedule, make sure there’s Joshua time and friend time and me time. We’re coming into my favorite time of year in Maine, and I want to appreciate every moment of it, and not miss any opportunities for gratitude.

As I was writing, the rain tapered off to nearly nothing, picked back up, and has slowed again. There *is* something relaxing about it, even in the sounds of the spray sent up by the tires on the passing vehicles. I’m going to take that as a sign that I’m headed in the right direction.

So last May, a coworker and I were in charge of the first department “fun day” we did at work, and we thought it would be fun for everyone to plant something to have at their desk. May flowers, and all that. So I went out and bought a bunch of seed packets and a bag of potting soil and a few lil pots in case people didn’t have them or forgot them. Please bear in mind that I have killed every plantish thing I have ever been responsible for, and so have no idea what I’m doing.

I waited until everyone had finished up, and just spread a bunch of the remaining seeds in my pot. I set it on my desk and pretty much expected to have a stickered terra cotta pot of soil in my cubicle. But then, lil sprouts popped up, and suddenly, I really wanted these seedlets to grow. I moved the pot to the one bit of windowsill we had in our room, and watched my pot fill with beautiful green leafy vines. I had no idea what I was growing since I’d tossed in a motley assortment of whatever seeds were left over, but it didn’t matter. They were thriving, and I was their caretaker.

I’d come in after a weekend, and see them looking rather sad and lifeless. I watered them and spoke encouraging words (very quietly, so as not to seem crazy to my colleagues), and was so excited when, an hour later, they had perked up and were again reaching for the sunlight. By the time we moved offices in late January, it was clearly time for a larger residence, and so I brought my little potted plant home and transplanted it into a bigger container. I was so scared that it would be traumatic and that I chose the wrong potting soil and that I would over- or under-water them and I would ruin this first ever plant I had grown.

And at first, it did seem that way. I kept it in the living room, which is really Joshua’s man-cave and I rarely spend time there. I watered it when I remembered, and felt guilty when I didn’t. Then I about gave up and figured I was better off not trying. Then I realized I was giving up on a living thing unable to do for itself, and that I couldn’t, just couldn’t, not try to nurse it back to health. So I did. I spoke to it as I cleared away dried up leaves, untangled the long strands and spread them out so they could grow in different directions, started turning the pot and moving it to different windowsills to allow for more and varied sunlight.

This morning, I went to water it and move it to a window and noticed a flower on the end of the very longest tendril. A beautiful, tiny little purple and yellow Johnny Jump-Up. This one seedlet had grown to many inches long, had been entangled with its neighbors and I’d extricated it and given it breathing room. There was a short length of it that had withered leaves still. But it had bloomed, nearly one year exactly after it had been planted.

I feel like this is a pretty apt analogy for my own growth. I look at the shoots that grow straight and tall, and that have only healthy, vivid green leaves. Then I look at this one, which may well be the very first sproutlet I saw at my desk. It has surely struggled, and it is not all the way healthy. Its path is meandering and unsure, and sometimes the cat bats it about. But, in the end, this one – not the youthful, tall, straight shoots – is the one that flowered. This one that has endured through a year of seasons, this one that has suffered neglect and still feels the effects of it. This one that persists has blossomed, making the single tiny flower a true little miracle. I am grateful for the little miracles in my own life. The ones that come at the end of a tedious and difficult and circuitous time of growth. I know that there will be more, both for me and for my wee plant. I am proud of us both.

I wrote over on FolioFiles today because I wanted to say thank you to Maurice Sendak, and that is the more appropriate space for it. I’m not through, though, so here is the video that brought me to the kind of tears you just can’t stop. I feel like I have lost a friend I never knew I had, but who got it – who got *me* – like so few do.

Maurice Sendak on Death (and life)