After I started dating post-divorce, the men who had meaning to me all became identified with birds. I tend to attach meaning to things that might seem otherwise coincidental, and the more those men meant to me, the more synchronicity and meaning seemed to develop. Vultures, especially black ones, are significant to me personally. Someone told me once that some Native Americans called them “spirit eagles,” because they took away bad thoughts and carrion of the soul as they soared majestically. They're beautiful when they circle, and they always seem to appear when I'm emotionally heightened.
Rex was named for a giant rooster, but he was always associated with eagles. Katniss was a grey parrot. (Gawd, I hate bird people.) Bounder self-identified with crows, but he is inexorably tied to red-wing blackbirds.
It took me a long time to associate a bird with Rango. But a year or so ago, when things between us were really beginning to show the signs of strain, I heard the song “Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants. I'd heard it a million times, but it struck me hard that night.
Even after two years, I was still fighting him. I would sometimes resist his attempts to reach into my darkness, crawling so far up inside my own head that he couldn't have reached me if I'd wanted him to. But I did want him to.
And he was my bluebird of happiness, my happy place of peace and content when nothing else could be. I had to make space for him, intentionally and mindfully. I had to build a birdhouse for him in my soul.
I told him all of this. I still don't really know how he felt about it. But I bought a decoration for the wall in our house, a tree with paper birds. The bluebird was the first one I placed, out front of the others, ready to watch for the rest of us.
He bought a blue canary nightlight for me for Christmas, to watch over me when I get up in the night, terrified of the dark. He would wear this blue shirt I bought him for his first birthday with us, even though he hated the way the collar crumpled in the laundry. He knew I loved the shirt, because the color was the same blue of the brightest parts of his eyes.
After he moved out, we decided to continue to try to make our life work. We spent the summer working on the house, painting and cleaning out crap in anticipation of his return by fall. At the store one day, I found a solar-charged LED bluebird. I placed it by the front door, so I would always see him at night when he wasn't there, so he would have a light in the dark when he came home.
We have come to the point that we are no longer tenable. My insecurities and his insecurities--both textbook examples of avoidant and anxious attachment styles--are in dire conflict. His depression and anxiety is overwhelming to us both, and I have felt desperate in my need for comfort and reassurance. We can no longer adequately respond to the other’s needs. I am no longer a place of comfort for him.
Whether super-villain or impotent superhero, I seem to be making him worse. I tried my best to offer him a hand to hold onto, but he has turned so far away that he couldn't reach me if he even looked. I love him deeply and passionately, but sometimes that's just not enough. Sometimes, it's too much.
As I look through the house for his belongings to be boxed up, I am surrounded by those bluebirds. I don't want to shoo them away right now. Not yet. They're a reminder that we were happy and that we loved one another. That we were, at all.
So for now, the bluebirds stay. Every time I wash dishes while standing on the bluebird kitchen mat, I will remember. Every night, as the blue canary shines, I will feel a little safer in my darkness. And the bluebird by the front door will remain a beacon for us for a while longer, welcoming him home if he's ever ready.
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