“Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become a woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child’s blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality….I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.”

― Anaïs Nin

Hot Tears

by Marta Luzim, MS

After my mother’s death and sister’s suicide, I went to a therapist who specialized in grief. As my grief tumbled out of my belly, I began to beat pillows and yelp. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed counselor sat still and quietly said, “If you put a pillow over your mouth, you won’t disturb the other people in the building.”

REALLY?

Well, let me scream so loud in your face that your eyelashes burn and your freakin tongue falls out of your mouth…ARE YOU KIDDING ME? When did our grief become quiet and polite? How do we love each other, really love each other, and escape from this matrix, this hypnotic state, this brainwashing of nothingness, meaningless, coldness, and numbness. I want to touch, feel, attach. I want to know, live, breathe. I suffer, I cry and I break. And I rebuild, rebirth and keep walking with a limp. I am human…human, goddamit!! With a Spirit and Soul. My soul teaches me to be human, shows me the way, that I am human. They lead me with a iron hand and a soft heart pointing. I have to walk through the fire of my own body and feel all that is there to feel. Like the ancients who howled, and beat their chests when their loved ones died. If I allow myself to love the imperfections that reek from my body and mind, then I can call out my own name with joy. This spirit wants me to know how small and fragile I am, the soul, how resilient and strong I am.

Life is a rhyme that is unrhymeable. It makes no sense, and only feeding the soul with voices of passion that cry, laugh and grieve can I truly live. I can go and on and on, yelping like a lunatic, because I have no answers. All I can do is strip until there is only skin, bones and sweat standing in front of me.

What matters now is that I take my insides and turn them out. That I stop playing the game, the mass deception, that women are not women, but have become men. In their empty stares, and stark starched smiles, and positive attitudes that wipe out all the mourns and groans that breathes life into the lungs and heart. Women fought to be equal to men, and they won that war only to lose their compassion and soul. What matters is that I find the deep woman, the fiery woman, heated, juicy woman who steps out of her camouflage, strips the vines that choke her scream, and allows her throat to shake with grief; She is the belly of the womb. She is the one who sucks, eats and births. What matters is that I am here. Right here sitting on this chair, writing, saying whatever I want to say. That I find my voice and let others find their own. That I let my tits hang, and my vagina dry up, and moisten it with my soul. That I use lubricators and pump up the volume so I can hear the growl of hunger through my ovaries. That my feet feel the soles of the grass and step away from being the maiden and run towards being the crone. Sitting alone, waiting for other crones to show up because they’re sick and tired of what the world has to offer them: empty promises and fake gods. That they want to create new worlds they can build together. Not made of botox, belly tucks, hair extensions and eyelifts. Not worlds of millionaires, running the country dry. Not worlds of being good daughters or wives, or whatever the roles dictate. But a world that cares for the soul, the heart, the desire, the love, the despair, my reason for being.

Only in that journey will I find my moon soul.

The woman who hides, afraid of her own scream, represses evolution of the feminine. The ache of her longing needs to be seen, cradled like a babe, nourished with the sun’s heat that sweats the skin and opens her heart to rage, that stops her from pretending.

I thought myself strong, independent, the skies the limit. And now the Goddess, God or whatever creates this whole crazy-making universe decided to throw me down to my knees. Praying, yelping, howling for faith to restore me. Now I whimper and whine and kick and hurt, vomit and stink and lean on everyone that will offer me a soft shoulder to hold, not pull away from the stench of my fear and anxiety.

To be lost, vulnerable and let everyone see my guts hanging out, my head over a toilet bowl, holding myself in a womb-like embrace, is an embarrassment. The clothes I wear to hide are pride, ego and toughness — and I think this is good? We are told that to be lost and afraid is wrong. I need to put on my war paint and fight the demons, and to evolve toward the light.

At the end of the road, there is this light…the light of just being.

Play acting? No, it is not worth it. Let’s find kindred spirits who are strong, loud and disgusting, gross and yelps with grief. They pound on the drum, calling for all to wail as crazy, nuts and obnoxious as they can be. Let’s make the world uncomfortable with screams, like the baby who won’t stop crying and crying, and no matter what you do, they won’t stop until they are ready. That is the woman’s cry, that is the woman’s strength. To keep going, keep yelling, strip off the suit of man and wear the soft, pliable skin of woman, the one who saves souls, who eats grass, trees, and plants the seeds of moonbeams in the water.

This is what is worth living for. I don’t want to wear fake clothes, I don’t want to pay taxes that man-made systems have built, which takes that money and uses it for their own greed, not to feed the poor, sick or aged. They think themselves immortal, powerful, beyond death and judgment. Who are THEY kidding? Who am I kidding to try to fit into this mind-fuck jibberish of power and control? Why live up to false gods that speed us toward illness and death of the heart? What is the middle, the balance, the tenderness?

I am learning through my grief body, through the suffering that squeezes every ounce of love from my skin. I want that love, that deep orgasmic, drooling, mystical love. I grieve lost ecstasy. The euphoria children are born with. Then the rules, the have to’s, the should’s, the do it right, be appropriate, don’t be too much, too sensitive, too loud, and parents smack the children dry, closing down the roots of life that spawns from their gentials. Then the soul is raped and scourched.

I grieve my lost self. My mother’s lost self. My sister’s lost self. My grandmother’s lost self. The lost feminine whose voice is raw from decay. Let’s dance around the fire, frenzied and alive, and SCREAM out. I CAN GRIEVE LIKE AN ANIMAL! I am the innocence, the rapture, the continuation.

Down on my knees, clutching my hands to my heart, I pray to the stars, the desolate flames of the night that run into rivers of stars. I pray. How do I live? I pray. What do I claim as my own vision? What vision will claim me?

My vision, it hides in my groin, it takes my breath away. It tightens my thighs so I can’t feel the passion of my own dreams. What lingers in my cells that asks for forgiveness? What do I forgive? The vision of love lost, love borrowed, love blue. The night of lovers who tear each other apart like fragile lace that turns to ice and stone.

Love. Lined with thorns. Love seducing the young souls. Love, a web of lies and a womb to lay my head on. Do I forgive this love that preys on my heart like a coyote cry. Love, you arouse my wet senses and then leave me as dry as an autumn leaf. You make so many promises of eternal life and passion. Love, the vision, hangs on a cross. Love, it flies on wings. Love, who are you and what will you bring to my door or light through my window.

I cling to my belly where an insatiable need to pour out and drink in love wanders, lost and desolate from a humanity that has forgotten that love is bittersweet, and deeper than any word or phrase or sentence or image can hold onto. Look at the moon, Love, look at the moon…where do you hide? Black is so seductive and love dark lives…that is the vision left from the residue of grieving, ecstatic love, lover after lover after lover.

How do you keep living?