patterns

 I'm sitting in Taylor and Stuart's guest room listening to the thunderstorm blend with the sound of the river rapids, while the geode slices of the wind chimes I gifted them eons ago slap against each other in the wind on the balcony, and I'm thinking about the way my life flows in patterns and cycles. 

This week, the Sava outside the guest room window has been wearing away my learned cynicism, the pessimistic voice that says any time my life is going well, things must be on their way to falling apart. I keep the window tilted open. Taylor periodically walks through and closes it. And I open it again. I need the sound of the water on the rocks. 

In May of 2013, I was in a really good place in terms of my career. My dissertation was still in process, but ahead of schedule. I had just signed a contract to teach for a different department, training that would open up my job prospects after graduation. I had signed a lease on a sweet apartment near a frolleague. I had a contract for technical writing and translation over the summer. My skills and knowledge were valued, and I was doing work that was both challenging and enjoyable. 

When Adam died the next month, I lost all of that. And tied up with my grief were disappointment and anger over these secondary losses. I eventually finished that dissertation a year late, but I had to abandon both contracts. Everyone was understanding and generous with me, of course, but I still resented having had my projects ripped out of my hands. Losing them cost me part of my identity, and the loss of that training opportunity curtailed that career path entirely. 

Leaving Moscow this past March brought all of these feelings of anger and disappointment and grief roaring back. It felt so very similar. I had a full-time, continuing academic appointment. I had a cozy apartment in a great neighborhood. I had travel and writing in mind for the summer. Just at the moment of good career prospects and stability, of settling into a space and a plan, I lost all of that stability again, and I am so incredibly angry about it. 

Why can I not have stability? 

Why am I once more blown over by events out of my control?

Why have circumstances forced me to rebuild my life from shambles *again*? Reader, I am here to tell you, it does not get easier with practice. 

The answer, of course, is because bad things happen. Full stop. The universe is not actually targeting me for destruction. I am not Job, caught in the middle of God's bet with Satan. This is life in a broken world, and it's on us to make meaning from our experiences as we work to heal the brokenness. 

The difference this time, of course, is that the loss is not my private one. In 2013, my family's personal tragedy existed in a world that just kept moving around us. In 2022, my personal losses pale in comparison to the millions of refugees fleeing their homes, the as-yet-uncounted numbers of civilian casualties, and the victims and survivors of gun violence in the US. And so I give to Doctors Without Borders and I write to my Congresspeople and I share reliable news and op-eds on social media because I am safe and housed and able to channel my rage and sadness in those directions. 

But I am so so so tired of rebuilding. I just want to live in a world that has finally left the constant spiral of destruction. I crave stability in my own life, and for the world. We all deserve to stand on solid ground, and adventure should be a choice, not a response to destruction. 

In 2015, as I was moving out of the wilderness of widowhood grief and finding my feet again, I visited Taylor and Stuart in Algiers. Here I am again, life in pieces, in their guest room, reconnecting with my friends and talking through possible futures.

I still have no answers, but I'm slightly less immobilized by my anger and despair, and that's not nothing.