Two months ago, I came to the conclusion that I was, indeed, going to have to put my cat to sleep.  Two months ago, I bravely signed my name to a contract accepting a Graduate Teaching Fellowship to a Doctoral Program at the University of Oregon, which means that I am cleaning house on the East Coast and preparing to move West with nothing more than suitcases, leaving my biological and urban family behind.  Two months ago, I decided to be friends again with a man I love(d), and to work part time on a Congressional campaign during the primary - ending 7:00pm this evening (yes!). 

I haven't slept more than a handful of full nights since then.  I have had random crying episodes, and have only sung at most six hours a week in comparison to my usual ten to twelve.  I miss my cat, my little buddy (little being a joke because he was a large breed), and I am not nearly as creative as I normally am.  When I say creative, I don't mean "Look, I made a pillow sham from this kitchen apron I never wear anymore!"  (If that's your method of being creative, by all means, continue.  I'm not trying to be condescending.)  I mean creative from the perspective that my work as a musician comes from an emormous amount of energy inside of me that compels me to move everyday - get out of bed, cook good food, use my emotional resources to create beauty in the world... no, that hasn't been me and it's been frustrating.  

But, I have found myself to be calm more times than not.  Whether that's from exhaustion, I don't know, but I have given up trying to will things to work.  They will work out as they will.  

I'm going home tonight from poll watching and am going to unpack my newly delivered keyboard, and start playing and picking through new arias.  I'm going to wonder what my cat would've done in response to these sounds, just like I wondered if he would have stuck his nose in the bowl I was dropping cherry pits into when I was preparing the fruit for cobbler this past weekend.

I'm coming out of a phase of transition - what else is life? - with a different understanding of myself as an emotional person, being that I cannot be confined by a desk job and that grieving takes away from my creative output in the short term.  Also, I am finally capable of forgiveness in a way that I never thought it existed. 

Whether or not said Man stays in my life in any significant way, I don't know.  But, I do know that he looks at me in a way that he never has before and I don't remember his eyes being so green.  I do know that I must be careful in how I spend my energy and I must take extra good care of myself... my creativity won't come back, but it will go forward, just like my life.