letters

this is an excerpt from a letter than i emailed to dan a while back, during a day of emails. lately our exchanges have become more and more about existensial things and feelings and emotions and stuff--whereas previously it was "so what are we doing for dinner" and mundane household crud.

this day in particular i was having a real theoretical few moments, trying to comprehend and understand and find a metaphor for what was going on in my head and what i thought was going on in dan's head, too.

metaphors, for me, are sometimes an easier and more accessible way of viewing a large and somewhat unruly situation.

so here's the email, cut for length:

*********

anyway, here's how i see it.

everyone has a different key, a different time, a different place, to unlocking the juggernaut of self. eventually everyone comes to this spot where they have to turn their view inward; this is yours. i think that serena was your medium to finding that you needed to.

i keep thinking of like a messy garden. it's there, whether you tend it or not. it's growing, it's dying, it's living, it's thriving--with or without your guidance. suddenly you have been gifted with the key to opening the gate, and look inside--and man alive, you've got a disaster on your hands! everything is out of control, things are growing outside the alloted garden space, weeds have drifted in, you've got a giant sunflower and another tomato plant that you're certain YOU did not plant...

my whole thing is that i was given the key at some point after corey died. i started my journey through my own garden, started trying to understand the weeds and the flowers and all that crap. i didn't get very far because i think i got distracted by something in the garden that i didn't plant there...or many things, or maybe just a shiny watering can...you know how i work.

at the same time, i haven't been stuffing things into my garden and forgetting about them. (; (; nudge nudge...not that i know anyone who HAS been doing that. LOL

i'm sure your garden, aside from the regular stuff, has a few things that REALLY don't belong, like an old model t car,etc. you get the existential idea. yours has been neglected; you're learning how to deal with it. you're going to unearth things from time to time that make you have to stop and see why whatever it is exists, why it's there, if you want to keep it or not, if you need to move it around, etc.

i think the problem isn't that you don't have the strength or the tools, it's that you've never had to have this KIND of strength and you've never used your set of tools.

i think in our collective garden, we haven't paid a ton of attention. mine has been growing all over yours, and vice versa, and we've got stuff in there that we have never considered or expected. i am also dealing with the idea that serena doesn't care. i wrote about that this morning in my blog, about how i need to learn when to walk away, and when to run, etc. but i don't think that i need to run as far as she apparently feels is necessary.

in other words, i feel that she's got the same problem we do, garden-wise. she's ignored a part of her garden, and voila! she still has the same plants there that were there before, with roots just as deep and just as hardy...but personally, i think she's trying to pretend that the gigantic sunflower is really just a daisy.

which as we all know does not work.

i think that she DOES care for you a great deal. i hope that she cares for me, but i'm not sure. i don't think that you are throwing anything away by caring for her, or tearing up our relationship. yeah, i think whatever mutual garden we had is being refigured and weeded, but i think that it is SO much more healthy this way, regardless.

************

that's where we were at then. i know i've had some email breakthroughs since, and so has dan. but it's up to him to sort through if he wants to share more, at this point. LOL i have to constantly keep deleting and such to keep my inbox at work manageable and allow me to actually open up other items like oh...work related emails. LOL

today at work one of my coworkers was let go. it was awkward because the cube walls are like 6 feet high, so if i stand on tiptoes i can see over the tops of them. i don't hear well, what with the deaf ear and all, so i couldn't hear what people on the other side of the wall were saying, but i could hear the noisy whispers.

it's an oxymoron that whispering can be so loud, isn't it?

anyway, i'll miss the coworker who was fired. she was friendly and a hard worker--and you can't ask for much more. of course, she missed a fair amount of work...so i'm sure that was their backup for saying "good-bye"...but the fact remains that we're coming up on year end, which is always so busy, and they let someone with tenure go.

for pete's sake! suspend her for two weeks! give her all the unpaid time off she wants! she shows up more often than not, so who the hell cares? honestly...more people are going to be leaving if they keep this up. besides the fact, with me moving into the conversion department and another associate moving from conversion back to client services, they're going to have 3 people out at the same time having babies!!! michael's wife, karen, and the new girl, maria. on top of that another coworker is going to be a grandma around the same time! at least two people are set on leaving...the word "ugly" doesn't seem to come to mind in what they're thinking. i wouldn't invite anyone onto this sinking ship--because that's what it's becoming, lately.

part of me is not liking the thought of moving into conversion because i know what happens when they get to client services -- they're neglected. there's not enough people or enough hours in a day to keep up and follow through on everything that needs to be kept up to date.

impossible. obviously from the preggers folks, it's not inconceivable.

but ridiculous beyond comprehension? yes indeed.

anyway, i'm off to primp for bed. cheers all and apologies for the epic. (;