who can see behind my tears?

I am at work, waiting for my last client. Tears pool and leak while my mind probes the tender spots, seeking for reasons. Sometimes I find none. That can be hormones. But today thoughts of a stillborn baby many years ago surface easily. I notice that many lonely memories and feelings of being lost and misjudged rise and dissipate as though connected on a string, like the tail of a kite.

I remind myself that feelings can't kill me. That it's not how you feel that really matters, it is how you are.

Feelings are funny like that. I don't want to ignore them, but I don't need them blowing me all over the map either. So, like Stacy said, I sit with them. I roll them around in my mind, feel their contours, witness the parade of memories. But I don't dive in, not anymore, thank god!

Lonely. My inbox is empty. I check, restlessly, and feel the sharp disappointment like a thump on my chest. My twentieth anniversary remains unmarked, with my husband on call. In eight days I mourn the distant loss of a baby I never knew, a baby I buried beneath a redbud tree, which later died. No marker remains. Even the soft little mound is gone.

She was so tiny, so fragile. She looked like a little old person, beautiful and translucent, a little fairy-child who never drew a breath, never saw the sun or heard laughter, or music. We will never know why. I opted to bring her home, rather than send her tiny body in for an autopsy. I couldn't bear the thought. And what would it change, really?

I have few shoulders to cry on. Probably a good thing, cause I am a soppy mess right now. I am heart-close with one young lady who is an amazing wordsmit, brilliant and troubled, but she is half my age and I don't run with her crowd. We have a mentoring relationship and I am the crone, obviously.

But that is not friendship, is it.

I don't understand why I am so alone. People seem to like me okay, and I'm not too hard on the eyes. I'm a little hard to talk to, maybe, but I try to accommodate that. I don't really need to talk so much. I don't mind pretending my mouth is full, or looking preoccupied to give people a graceful exit.

It's funny, because I rarely feel lonely. But today I do. Maybe because I never notice I am alone until I need someone. Oblivious, like usual. Oh so independent, maybe.

Well, I am in good company, I guess. I just wish they were closer! What's an old woman got to do for some distraction around here!