Sweeping out is actually #81 in the Sufi book of life which includes the 99 pathways, and I believe names the Sufi's have for god. When I was in college I took a spiritual retreats class, and visited a sufi abode, and they had all these names listed on the wall, and they were names for god. I was fascinated. I figure if god is in the details, it kind of makes sense to have different names for all those details.
The name for sweeping out is Al-Muntaqim.
In chrinological line of the stories from my travels I have just finished posting for April. On the last day of the marathon of April I was railing against the gods, mostly because I had found all this new stuff, but was still just as confused as ever about how things would fit in my life. I was on the phone with Ria ranting and raving at one point. Not yelling at her, but just yelling to her about life, fate, gods of the world, and a bunch of other things. Following this I ended up hanging out with Josh and Alana and giving drunken tarot readings. According to both of them the tarot readings were pretty good, but I really shouldn't get drunk and give tarot readings when I've spent part of my evening railing against the gods. I don't think it's a good idea for most people to get drunk when they are the kind of angry I was. I ended up with a sinus infection shortly after that night.
I don't get really angry much.
I get frustrated a lot, but that's okay because when i get frustrated I usually get creative and persistent. Some of my most creative interventions at work have come because I was frustrated with how things were going with a client (I'm a child and family therapist).
However I realized the other night that the angry comes when I am so hurt or drained that i just can't anymore. I'm really good at loving people and taking care of them, and pretty good at doing things that help me create the things I want in the world. I'm also able to accept that people struggle with themselves, and I try not to get too hurt by things people do, because most of the people I keep around me are good people and they wouldn't want to try and hurt me. Still sometimes things don't go the way I want or sometimes people's carelessness can really hurt.
April was more things not going the way I wanted.
However two days ago was my birthday, and for about two weeks before this I had written a poem I had been trying to write for a while, and it touched on places where I had been really hurt.
Here's the poem.
He has lost his name
It has gone the way of socks in the dryer
lost marbles
and I could say the lost city of atlantis,
but as much as he might think so
he isn't really that important
The nameless mass of memories has collapsed upon itself.
I can hold it in my hand
Crystalline, pockmarked, and still glowing a little.
I carry it behind the door to a lead lined room
In the room there is a basket
for all the girls who became "that girl"
I don't like that girl
I don't trust that girl
That girl is.......
Any number of adjectives or descriptors
thrown into the basket
lumped in like laundry
waiting to be matched back up to their humanity.
Above the basket on the wall their is a shelf
with metal dividers
The first few spaces are empty
the labels underneath say things like
"The boy in the blue silk boxers"
"The arrogant bastard"
"the mistake i dated twice"
and "Mr pick-a-lane"
Next to that is a space with a box in it
it says "Jacob I have loved"
That boy was tricky.
he didn't get a label
he got a book title.
It was held in ellipses
like the tongs used to hold nuclear material
after it has been used to fuel so much
There are places in those memories that are dangerous to me
they can mutate who I am
or radiate poison through my body
There is only so much the water's of my emotions can handle
I know because my grandfather died
when the water crept up the inside of his body
from his ankles, knees, thighs, belly, up to his lungs where he drowned
I have no wish to die that way.
So I carry the latest mass of memories in my hand
Aware that if left alone it could start fires in other people's houses
I put it in a new box and label the shelf
"self absorbed cynic"
I walk out,
shut the door
and slink down with my back against it.
I will go back in that room empty handed time and again.
It seems foolish I know
but as long as I am holding onto those people
as nameless masses of memories
there is still part of me
that is the wounded victim or the angry bitch
who took those names away from them.
So when I can,
When I heal a little more
or when I feel stronger
I will go back in that room
pull down a box
take out what's inside
Brush of the harmless dirt
that has collected over the half lives of memories
Breathe, Cry, Maybe yell a little
and check the geiger counters
to see if what I am holding is poisoning me
or if it's safe now
no more damaging than an X-ray
I'll look down into it
checking for glimpses of that lost name
scrape away at the sides
trying to get it free
I'll take a deep breath as the pieces fall away
and hope that the day has finally come when I can give that name back to him.
During the two weeks between writing this and my birthday I realized both of those boys who still had boxes in the poem I tended to associate with my birthday. Jacob is named in the poem, and there are two reasons I associate him for my birthday. I moved to Worcester after my birthday at the end of 2002. September 2003 was my first birthday Jacob was one of my dearest friends at the time, and he and my parents conspired to get him to Worcester for my birthday. It made me so happy. However the flip side of that is 5 years later for my 30th birthday I had asked my friends for one thing "Tell me your favorite Liz story". I called them on my birthday talked with them to hear stories, and heard tons of things. it was great overall. When I called Jacob he didn't have time for me. I cried, but didn't make anything much of it, because I'm usually good at forgiving people, and I get that people don't alway have time. And besides this was after the cross country trip where we had such a good time, and I was planning the Vegas trip, so I was hoping to see him later in the year. But when he bailed on the Vegas trip, I never got my Liz story.
I feel like I have to put in that this isn't just a dump on Jacob. I wrote him an e-mail and told him how I was hurt and how he had made me feel worthless at the time, and how I didn't think I could be friends with him like I was, but maybe we could just be whatever kind of relationship their was to be when I saw him next. When he read the e-mail he called right away. He offered
to fly out to Boston so we could talk this out. I said no, that he was really good at the grand gestures, but this one couldn't be made up in a grand gesture. He was most upset because I wasn't mad. He wanted me to be mad, and was most upset because I wasn't. I just kind of wished him well. And the funny thing is it was a completely honest wishing him well. I knew he didn't intend to hurt me, but being mad would be allowing him access to the part that was hurt, and I couldn't trust him to do that, so he was not going to be the one who helped that get better. Mostly it was me who had to do that.
The story of the "self absorbed cynic" (henceforth referred to as SAC because I don't need to name him) is an even older story. It's actually from half a lifetime ago (literally I was 16). On my 16th birthday I somehow ended up in the role of telling the boy I liked that his friend had died. I knew the boy who had died, we were not close but I knew him. However at 16 I was already familiar with loss. by that time I had been to the funerals of 3 of my grandparents, an uncle, my dad's cousin, and had at least two other people in my life not die but be taken away in an instant.
I wanted answers, and I spent most of the day walking around my town looking for them wherever I could, because to me this death and loss thing was just getting ridiculous, and I was hurt and a little angry. (it is worth noting I was probably wearing my dead uncle's army Jacket as I started wearing it somewhere around age 13 and wore it when weather appropriate pretty much all through college.) Somewhere in my wandering I returned home and found the foreign exchange student who was stying with us hanging out with SAC in the basement of our house. I figure it's entirely possible they had been making out before they heard me coming down, but they were both polite and listened to my concerns and quest for answers. SAC told me about how the year before on his 15th birthday his friend had killed himself, and how upset he had been and how he hated his birthday because of it. I listened, and when we finished the conversation I continued my wandering looking for answers, but that conversation stuck with me.
That boy's birthday was 3 weeks after mine. I don't remember if it started that year, or with his 17th birthday, but every year for at least 5 I would write him long letters for his birthday. I would usually start shortly after mine.
I considered that boy a friend for many years. I considered him a friend long after he stopped acting like one, but recently I started to realize how badly he has treated other people who would have considered him a friend as well, and that was how he got the SAC label.
He was unable to respond in caring to people who had repeatedly reached out to him, which meant he stopped deserving my friendship, but the poem came about when a mutual friend of ours was hurting in response to major life event and trying to reclaim her right to be happy, and his response to something she had written was a philosophical point about how no one deserves happiness, and saying that one did was like saying that everyone deserves a mansion.
When I stopped being friends with him I was angry for a while about all of that time and effort I put into those letters, and the effort I put into trying to be friends with him, but as it got closer to my birthday I started to realize I did it as an affirmation of life for myself. I wanted so bad to love life that I was going to in defiance of anything standing in my way. And I wanted to give that away to as many people as I could. I hated that he became one of the things standing in my way.
This year I was really trying to get rid of some of those old triggers, and speed up the half lives on the emotional nuclear waste that I have. It's amazing how some open air on some of those old hurts can speed up healing processes, but it's not pretty. I spent a good portion of the last three hours of my birthday on the phone with my friend Kelly and her boyfriend ranting and raving about something I was upset about, knowing damn well that it was the polarizing effect of my birthday.
Because on my birthday I have to think about my life. Most days I just do it. I live as best I can in a way that will make the world around me the place I want it to be. I take enough care of myself so that I can keep at it, and I'm aiming to get about 120 years, but will be happy to get 80some. There is part of me that knows I probably won't see the things i want happen in the world, but I can do a hell of a lot in the meantime to make things a little better for myself and those around me.
And it's funny because the partying was great, but it wasn't the partying that quite gives me that affirmation of life, it was the stories, and the hugs from people who have been in my life and know me, and the happy birthday wishes from the people who couldn't be there, but I know if I read them this post would get it and say "Yeah Liz I know."
I've never hated my birthday, but it often makes me want to cry. I love my life, and I try and accept that it's enough. I do alright with that most days. It's just around my birthday I feel like I need to think about my year, and my life as a whole, and the fact that there is still more to come, and I'm going to keep at it, and in some cases saying bring it on. Even though I know there will still be times when I will be hurt and angry again in the coming year, I will still be here trying to make the world better for as many people as I can (and probably still get in situations that are more than I can handle trying to help more than I can) for the next year, and sometimes that's a little overwhelming.
Anyways thanks for reading this.
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