Big Little Wolf's Daily Plate of Crazy

I woke to the sound of thunder, to a morning in a monochrome palette; color, sucked from the sky.

Whatever I was dreaming, it was gone, leaving only the loss, and vague images of women walking away.

As my thoughts peeled themselves from sleep, I began to wonder: Was I missing the women who used to populate my life so fully? Was I grieving their departure, or was I also a  woman who walked away – from so many things – turning my back on friends or loved ones without ever realizing?

• Do women walk away from passion more often than we think?
• Do women walk away from a fight more easily than men?
• Do women walk away from each other, at the most critical times?

Passion

Passion is a powerful word; it resonates with its own importance, its multiplicity of meanings. It is, in each of us, a flowering of inexplicable roots.

I study the sturdy assemblage of letters. They seem hardy, indestructible. The word “pass” stands firmly at passion’s door: as though we could – and must – step through into its embrace.

The word passion conjures sexual intensity, soulful struggle, fervent and amorous pursuit – all-consuming emotion directed in ways that overtake judgment, inspire accomplishment, and tumble into a fair share of folly.

Yet the origin of the word is hurt, or suffering. A strength of feeling that is, ultimately, consuming.

Whether directed at a person or a field of endeavor, are some of us more wired to be passionate? Unable to live without a level of engagement and vitality that promises dizzying heights – emotional, physical, and intellectual – even with all the risks involved?

In times of storm, our passions toss us about wildly, threatening to sweep us away or pull us under. Sometimes we must walk away.

But there are echoes: a residue that burns its faint music into the bones, an incurable thing, an illness, a final deep breath of self. Then we march on, mastering the art of shallow, measured breathing.

• Is walking away from passion more prevalent in women than men?
• In relationships? In sexual encounters?
• In pursuit of our most profound dreams?

And if we do turn away more often, is it because we are the shoulder, the backbone, the strong center upon which others depend?

Is passion easier to pursue before we have children, because we haven’t yet been split open, life pulled from our bellies, and a bond stronger than we could have imagined potent enough to change everything that comes after?

Fight

Why do women walk away from a fight? Why are we less likely to choose violence, unless pushed to defend our own? I’m speaking of fighting for our tiny patches of turf, for our glimpses at what we really want, for our rights to live as we wish. Emotional rights. Financial rights. Professional rights. Rights and rites of passion. Human rights.

• Is the notion of fighting for or fighting back learned?
• Is it circumstantial?
• Generational?

Do we weary sooner than the men, when it comes to the battlefield? Are we held back by a desire to make peace, even when peace may be the wrong choice, trying to convince ourselves we are doing so for our children, hoping they will have what we did not – a chance at passion?

Self

Without self, we sleepwalk. We serve no example.

• Do women walk away from who they are?
• Do we turn, just slightly, from the self?
• Does it happen in barely perceptible shifts that occur in relationships, in marriages, in the minutiae of daily compromises that ultimately chip away at who we are?
• Or who we could have been?

If we turn from ourselves, is it because we’ve lost our mirrors, or our courage to look into them? Or is that kind of searching inward too exhausting, too grueling, so we walk away in order to survive?

Not all women do these things. Some women walk away only at certain junctures. It isn’t black or white, yes or no. It isn’t like this Sunday sky; all darkness and sorrow. It may be a single circumstance that sets off a loss; it may be a pooling of circumstances, a rush, a flood, beyond damming up, beyond stopping, beyond anything we can do until it subsides on its own.

Then we mop up. We wait. We get down in the mud and see what we can salvage.

Women who walk away from each other

Sometimes women walk away from each other when we need each other most. Perhaps this is a natural erosion that comes with years, a necessary withdrawal from friendships and emotions that are too intense to sustain with dwindling resources.

Perhaps we aren’t alone in this. Perhaps men walk away from each other, and from themselves. I cannot say.

Once, I had amazing women in my life. We were younger then; it was a time before stony marriages and lost jobs, before devastating illnesses and the weariness of raising children. Before shadows: celebrations in shadow, silences in shadow.

Refuge

It is thundering again. When it storms, the dog scratches at my door and I let her in. If it is late at night, then I will not sleep because she circles restlessly in fear. But it is morning, and she is frightened like a small child, cowering, coming close, wanting contact.

She seeks refuge from whatever it is about the noise that terrifies her; I have always been her refuge. At times, she is so afraid that I sit on the floor and lean against a wall for support. She climbs onto my lap, despite her size and weight at nearly 80 pounds, and I stroke her face and hold her, as I would hold my child and stroke his brow and hair if he were upset. As I would comfort any child, whispering that everything will be alright.

Circumstances

When women walk away from battle, I believe they do so to be able to say everything will be alright. Somewhere in the picture, there is a child who needs to be protected. She may be the child.

When women stand and fight, it is for the same reason. But we haven’t read the Art of War, or if we have, we haven’t lived its principles as men have. We are inexperienced warriors. Our casualties are high.

When women walk away from passion, we abandon our selves.

If it is passion in love, we cling to ephemera and detritus, and we’re grateful. The detritus makes us smaller; the ephemera lightens us: worn love letters, fading snapshots. Physical sensations of lovemaking that return freely in our night dreaming.

There are dried petals from a rose once glowing and alive, now pressed between pages in an old journal.

There is a child’s face, always, somewhere, a child’s face.

If it is passion in pursuit of our dreams, we will ache until our memories are obliterated by age or exhaustion. Or we will circle back to ourselves, to our passions, however many years have passed, and push through the door – first a crack, then an inch, then the light. Whatever the outcome, we must turn toward the light.

When women walk away from each other, they leave a battered soldier behind who has little recourse but to turn and walk away herself. Sometimes it is only a few steps, but they are steps backward.

When women walk away from women with malice, it is a strange, bristling, soundless sort of betrayal. It is a killing thing.

When women walk away from a family, I have trouble understanding, yet I know enough to comprehend that it is about survival, and possibly, family survival. I also understand there are many ways to walk away. Some are physical, some are emotional, some are chemical. Sometimes there is apathy. Sometimes there is rage, and blood.

Sometimes there is the ghost that goes through the motions: hands to soap the dishes, arms to empty the laundry basket, feet to travel the produce aisle, a voice that says everything will be alright, but there is neither conviction nor reliance. Only shadow.

Children believe in presence, even if it inflicts pain, because it’s all they know. Children can be wrong in their assessments. Perhaps it is better to walk away.

Women for women, as best they can

After divorce, men and women both lose friendships owned by the “couple.” Not always, but often. Sometimes, one lobbies or manipulates to gain custody of the friends, much as they struggle over possession of everything else.

If you add a dramatic change in financial or social status, or some other life-altering event that cannot be foreseen, then people walk away, out of discomfort or fear. If it could happen to her, it could happen to me.

You become a contagion. Distances open like wounds. Friends, allies, even family members may disappear. I do not think they do so easily, but they do so. Not all, but many. And I cannot blame them.

This is the time when angels surprise us; they have no history with our other selves, no future that was discarded. They carry wings in their hearts.

Sometimes angels are men. They spread our legs in jubilation and wonder; they fill us with the coin of their realm. Tearfully, gratefully, we may walk away feeling richer, and with something to live on for awhile. There is gold jostling in our bellies.

Sometimes men offer friendship with their currency, and now we have silver to add to our growing good fortune. Even if the burden of carrying this wealth becomes hard to bear, we bear it. We always bear the weight of men.

Judgment

I’ve never been wise when it comes to recognizing the enemy, but women have never been the enemy; they have filled me with stories and hope, with sisterhood and parenting, with mischief and practicality. They have challenged me, inspired me, taught me, loved me, as I have challenged, inspired, taught and loved them.

Life intervenes. Years, miles, illnesses. We wade through heavy chapters as best we can. Sometimes we lose each other between the lines, the turning pages.

My friends of many decades are scattered across the country, and we are increasingly out of touch, separated by our daily battles that are private, by our worries, by lifestyles. Some of us, by judgments. Some of us, by fear of contagion.

The dark, the light

It is morning, and dark as night. Rain is falling steadily, numbingly. I hear it on the roof, on the tinny ventilation pipes that poke through shingle and asphalt. It is a lightless start of day; memories spill over like the water that I hear rushing through the gutters thick with pine needles and debris, water gushing over the aluminum lip and pouring down hard onto the ground, submerging plant beds, destroying. At least, temporarily.

When life spills over, some women walk away. Some stay and fight, or stand in support. But weariness may suck us under. We walk away from passion, from friendship, from things that frighten us because we feel we must. But I miss the women in my life, the women who never intended to walk away, the women who are unafraid – or were, as I was once – but who are caught up in the complications of their own lives, fighting for their next breath.

To some of those women, perhaps it seems that I have walked away. And it is “only” that I am fighting for my next breath, still stroking the dog’s coat as she trembles while it thunders, still holding my children close to my breast whenever they need me, still trying to find the strength to whisper the words: everything will be alright.

© D A Wolf

Big Little Wolf’s Daily Plate of Crazy

Tags: big little wolf, biglittlewolf, crazy life, daily plate of crazy, dailyplate, dailyplateofcrazy, divorce, divorce aftermath, feminism, Love, lovers, Parenting, passion, real women, reassuring children, Relationships, sexual relationships, Single Parenting, women friends, women walking away, women's lives