I took stock of my incomings and outgoings and made myself a sort of budget, and confirmed the conclusion that I’ve had for a while now, that I’m just barely hanging on.

Just now I sat down intending to work on the novel I’m writing but this is coming out instead. All day and week and month I’ve been doing all I can to avoid writing fiction… but let’s call this a warm-up.

Granted; I round up for every averaged expense for the line item on the budget. So there’s, I dunno, 50-100 dollars extra hidden, that, hopefully, would be there at the end of a month. And I am putting a tiny amount away into retirement. Still, it would be nice to make another grand or two a month, especially in this limbo I find myself.

I have been thinking a lot lately (OK I have been thinking a lot, always; I think a lot,,,) about this limbo, this season of grief. There are times that I picture myself folding into an embrace, not unlike a child enveloped by the wings of their mother. I think of how, in my last life, I was the one who held the system down and together, folded the laundry, cooked, kept the sink clean, kept the dust bunnies from overpopulating, paid the bills, got us places on time, and how in this grief I’ve let all go. In my grief I have reverted, regressed, entered a kind of childhood.

And I, the poet, know just enough of the idea of Internal Family Systems to be dangerous with my metaphors here. There’s this child–lost, scared, and so, so lonesome. The danger is that he approaches anyone to ask, “are you my mommy?”

And there’s this other figure, my naiive gutter-punk. Is he the one who wants to take care of someone in lieu of being able to take care of himself?

But I’m at a loss to know how to parent both of these parts, and how to usher them into adulthood, finally, and so that it will stick. Like procrastinating on working on a novel, or not putting the clothes away once they’re clean and folded, isn’t there a comfort in stagnation, and a safety in not taking up responsibility?

I’ve been thinking about this as a worker, too–and as a writer. And, I see, that it applies to me as a lover, too. There’s real risk in being great. Bigger–>harder. There’s so much responsibility, to be in business for oneself, to be an adult.

There’s a great irony here–I don’t know, maybe it’s not an irony, but just a reality: I believe the abusive behavior I walked through was acted out by their perpetrator’s child-selves, their own scared, lonely, naiive parts. They, too, were abused and neglected–and ultimately wanting to cast off and project their responsibility like a hot potato of shame. I see the congruency of my feelings. And I understand.

I had taken responsibility, for so much (wasn’t I the only one apologizing?), I was caretaker and caregiver, emotionally and logistically–and look what danger that put me in. There is risk to responsibility before; there is greater risk now. It’s no wonder that parts of me have flown back to the nest, singed, saying, “see these holes in my wings? if I can just add armor here and here, then I’ll get back out there.”

“Maybe.” Peeking out, tensed at the slightest noise. “We’ll see.”

Here, by way of “yes, and,” I’ve uncovered this survivorship bias metaphor, forcing the question: what would it mean to strengthen the parts that survived, not the wounds? Is adding armor to the wounded parts what turns a person sour and mysanthropic?

There’s a struggle.

And the fact is that this struggle did not come out of this last big trauma, it’s been there for a while. Couldn’t it be said that by taking and giving care for another, that I was doing so, so that I wouldn’t have to take full responsibility for myself? Leaning on each other. Codependent.

So what do I need to do? How do I love and nourish this wounded bird of an abandoned child? How do I smack some sense into this gutterpunk? How do I step into my higher self? How do I cleanse my frog-skin? If I enter the deep dark wood a pauper with nothing left to lose, how do I leave a king?

Is it sticking to a budget? Reading Iron John again? I hope its writing a novel.