It's Ash Wednesday. I gave up Facebook, I went to church, and remembered that for all of my angst, "De polvo soy, y al polvo volvere" (I am from dust, and to dust I will return). I was happy for the ashes on my forehead, and sad that church is still a lonely place for me after 3 1/2 years in LA. From college on, up until LA, it used to really be the center of my community and social world. Now I go, I sit by myself, and I try to find things to get plugged into but somehow, I haven't put much energy in to the right place at the right time yet. So I sing, and think, and enjoy it for what it is, but it feels somehow grey and lifeless compared to what I know church can be.
I frequently wonder what I want out of church anymore. With work being exhausting these days, and having too many cases that feel hopeless and overwhelming, I think what I want is a place where people gather to celebrate and hope. Where I see (relatively) healthy families. Where people work in community with a sense of hope (even when it's naive) that Yes We Can! make a difference. But sometimes I don't want to spend time thinking about anything big or grand. I just want to keep embracing the community I have, and dig my fingers into dirt, literal or figurative, and live. Read, play frisbee, walk with friends, grow tomatoes, waste time on facebook, do crossword puzzles. I used to want big, grand, idealistic Life all the time. Now I kinda just want normal.
In other news, I'm single again. Sans heartbreak this time, but certainly still bittersweet. I think we were two people trying to fit each other into a space left behind in the shape of someone else. As far as rebounds go, I think it was a soft landing. I have no regrets. He was different from Goat in a lot of ways... some of them were really healing, like realizing that I do not, in fact, have overwhelming emotional needs and that, say, wanting to know where a relationship is going after two years is not asking too much. But he lacked some things that really helped me connect with Goat, and when I felt disconnected from him I just found myself missing Goat more. I had inklings that he was going through something similar, and they were confirmed in a kind of painful way, but interspersed with the usual getting-over-and-readjusting to single life, I find myself excited, once again, about having a life in my own life. Not living out of a bag and traveling to another county every weekend. I may want to be an old married woman - sooner than later would be nice - but not at any cost. I'm not opposed to dating again, but in the meantime I want to play frisbee and get on my bike and go to church and see my friends and plant those tomatoes.
