.most mad and moonly.

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is more sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
--e.e cummings



It's been a busy couple of weeks and as always, I am behind on posts. I meant to post last week, my thoughts revolving a little around Father's Day. Parental tribute holidays are, as you can imagine, strange for me. Sometimes they pass me by and I only realize they are here mid-day. If I find myself thinking about them more often, it usually leads to a melancholy contemplation. This time, however, I found myself thinking a lot about happiness and about my parents as a couple. I don't know why exactly, except that my life lately has revolved mostly around my relationship (and my bettering of myself for myself but also for her). I worry about being too hard like my father or being too soft like my mother. No matter how dearly I loved them, I have always feared being like them. Not to say there were not qualities they both had that were wonderful, but I guess I never really saw them as "happy" (though I don't doubt that they loved each other).

I grew up in a home where there was a great deal of tension or a whole lot of silence. When the silence broke, it could sometimes get pretty violent. It's hard to explain it without making my father sound like a horrible person and a bully. He was not the former and was only sometimes the latter. I believe that a lot of that had to do with the anvil of stress he carried on him at all times. And my own anxiety today reminds me of it. On occasion, a person who is mostly silent and who tries to be compassionate feels her nerves wound so tight that she snaps. That's me - I am (as I have often said) my father's daughter. I say things I don't mean -- really, I don't. The worst possible things I can think of just fly from my mouth because I am so wound up and want everything to just back off. Only...I don't. I want to not hurt people, I want to be gentler and I want, most of all, the people I love to never doubt my love.

I don't think my mom knew that my dad loved her. I don't know that my mom believed that I loved her. But the first time anyone witnessed my father cry was at her funeral and my distant and strained relationship to her has been the biggest regret of my life.

So I have been thinking about who I am and how I react under pressure. I have been thinking about how to better show my feelings and I am trying to (though not always succeeding) remember to breathe.

On a somewhat related side note, I remembered this poem by e.e cummings that I always loved. I know I mentioned that I have been giving a lot of thought to happiness and what that means, too.

I am someone who considers herself an optimist. However, whenever anything goes even slightly wrong in my relationship, living situation, etc., it expands in my mind. It becomes a giant thing and overwhelming. It sometimes seems without a solution except to ditch it and start over. I dwell on things - bad things. They take over my mind when I am in quiet contemplation and I find myself walking around in this hunched over, worried stupor. This kind of thing has to stop. Mainly because I love someone who does make me happy 90% of the time. There is always room for improvement and I need to remember that it isn't the end if something seems like it is unraveling. It's just frayed and we can fix it. Rationally, I know that no one is happy all the time. But what I really need to remember is how happy she makes me most of the time. MOST. Not some of. Not a little of. Most of. That's important. That's our foundation.

That foundation is what I plan to be standing on for...quite awhile. I made the decision recently to stay in Kathy's home - for various reasons, but mainly because I just want to wake up where she is. This is new to me. I have never wanted to live with someone else before...have only done so by necessity. Now we just have a room to clean out and my stuff to unpack. It may be a little while longer still, but I'm on the road to being settled in.

That's all I've got for you today and I won't make any promises about when I will make another entry. But I will leave you with the following meme stolen from a friend's Livejournal:


"Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about.

Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it.

Ask for anything: latest movie watched, last book read, political leanings, favorite type of underwear, graphic techniques, etc.

Repost in your own journal (blog) so that we can all learn more about each other."