It is not a huge secret (only to those I don't feel like opening myself up to - which includes scores of people I know in real life) that I have been slowly breaking away from our place of worship. It has taken longer than I initially planned because I am a glutton for punishment and I am good at making excuses for bad behavior. 

So one of my questions was, what would I go back for? Would I go back for a Bat or Bar Mitzvah for someone I cared about? (these are now limited since there are almost no children left in said establishment and since my daughter was the younger in her group and is post Bat Mitzvah.) Would I go back for a funeral --again for someone I cared about. I add the caring caveat because I will now openly admit I'm a bad enough person to not consider it under other circumstances. That's a bit touchy when talking about death and life events but my life is too short and I'm tired of sharing it. 

I mention this, because it has officially come up. You know, sometimes I regret saying things outloud, the universe always hears me. Today, we got an invitation for a Bat Mitzvah for a young lady who after my daughter's ceremony announced she would give into the social pressures of mitzvahing if she could walk in Celia's footsteps. The establishment in question began its terminal dive with me when they refused to let us have my daughter's event on any day other than the Saturday of Shabbat. I was told I owed it to my community. 

For the non-Jews, to be Bat or Bar Mitzvah you have to be called to the Torah, when that happens, once you are passed a certain age, presto change-o you are Bat or Bar Mitzvah. Congregations take their Torahs out more than once during a week, and this can happen technically any of those times. In most places it does happy any of those times. There is an entire back story to this should you feel interested.

I'm going to save the word community in conjunction with this - above mentioned - group of people for another time or we'll be here all night. Put that on the list of things to remind me to rant about.

After being jerked around in that - and many other ways - my daughter opted out of the service all together. My very observant daughter who had been looking forward to this life event since she could say the words decided she was opting out. This is when a local Chavurah stepped in and saved us utterly. At the end of the day, we had  our event with our closest friends - who are our family as we are orphans - and our beloved cousins, almost privately since the entirety of the Chavurah decided not to show up that day. This made the event almost more special and more intimate. So it can be argued that maybe our joint did us a favor in alienating me. Maybe. However, I did give in and agree to let my daughter do the Monday service after all - when it was decided that what I was really doing was bargaining and I was then too tired to argue. We had a few people in that "community" that I didn't feel like letting down at the last minute. So we did both services. Technically, the day we did ours at home (our home-away-from-home-friends-like-family-house) Celia was Bat Mitzvah. The rest was just a charade. 

However, it made a deep impact on one child who was feeling very stressed about being put under the same social pressures. She said if she could do that on a Monday, then she would agree to this thing that everyone around her seemed to want more than she did. 

You can see it rolling towards me right? Because then, she sent us a formal invitation. Sigh. So while my pen was hovering over the how many can we expect box and how many are declining box I played this scenario back and back and back in my head. I decided there are 6 of us in this family, I could more or less promise 3 - just not which 3. Would I go to the Bat or Bar Mitzvah of someone I cared about?

This invitation came in the mail today, on the same day I had a good friend ask me to bring my kids to come and play with her in the snow. So while I was trying to force coats on to my lethargic children ( a week housebound seems to have had a negative effect on them) I started thinking about the friend waiting at the snow play area for us friend and how we met. I'm trying to spend every minute I can with her because she's leaving me soon. She is reaching what I have started referring to as "escape velocity."  This is a term I coined with regards to the ability of people to leave this area. New Mexico for those who know is "The Land of Enchantment", New Mexico for those who don't know is "The Land of Entrapment." I first heard it described as such by a close Arab friend of mine over 10 years ago now. I have lost track of the number of times I have heard it since. 

We met when my daughter was screaming from a tooth coming in and her son and just soiled all his clothes through a diaper. We reparied together to the bathroom to exchange infant teething tablets and diapers.  What kept us together all this time have been any number of things we like about each other, but also the mutual feeling of being utterly lost in this place. She has been planning on leaving since she got here. I've been planning on leaving since before I got here.Maybe the fact that this was never my idea has also colored things.

I don't have a lot of friends in this city. I could probably count them on one hand with all 5 fingers. 2 are leaving now. Really? I mean Really? One will be here as long as I will be and beyond. The other one will leave next as soon as ducks are in a row. When I was laying this out on the table the other night for Brian I actually burst into tears because I realized when my ducks in a row friend goes so does every last ounce of security I have at the moment, and the only family I've been able to scrape together (family modeled like clay from friends). On the other hand, I'm bordering on desperate to see them leave. Because I want to see it done. I want to see how it is done. I want to see it done and succeeded. I want to hear someone say to me "I've seen the outside, it's like we remember it - they've been lying to you, the apathy plague didn't take the entire country. They aren't all zombies - sanity's not all gone."

To be fair, I do love things about this place and I am genuinely happy for people who are happy here. I truly believe that the birthing world is alive and well and intact here better than anywhere else in this country. I believe that I will miss certain things painfully - should I ever reach escape velocity.

To be fair I know I will have fits of nostalgia and I promise to write about them here so you can rub my nose in them. However, the more I've thought about this entire day and the days leading up to it and the days to follow it the more I see the State of NM as slightly abusive but lovable boyfriend who has a complete and utter lack of ambition. After I leave, he'll go back to playing in his garage band and living with his Mom. I didn't make it any better here and it has dragged me down to think that I am no better than the salt of the earth types I am surrounded by. So I have started thinking about my "relationship."

For example, some days my husband and I will say - Okay - let's see if we CAN make this work. Let's see what it takes! We vow to be as positive as possible for entire months, to never make negative comments about the 505. To never use the word Burque in the derogatory. We vow to pretend we never lived in the ghetto and that it did not mentally destroy us. We vow to see the desert flowers as the entire universe and try and suck in the mountain air. You know, the same mountain air that's poisoning me. You know I had a Mexican friend say "if you were going to live in the ghetto you should have moved down to the barrio with us because it is safer." "Safer? I asked incredulously" "Yeah, you never hear of no drive-by stabbings, yo." Yes, it made me laugh at the time, but to this day when driving through the barrio (usually on the way to visit a client or on my way through the south valley for some permaculture tour)  I can't stop myself from hearing those words and thinking - but it's all a barrio. Show me where it isn't.

Then, the NMboyfriend will get a little too worried about my complacency and start slapping me around a little. I'll walk out to enjoy the mountain air and be assaulted any time of year by things I'm allergic to, even in the dead of winter down to the wood smoke. My children will come in covered head to toe in puncture vine after playing in their garden.When I find a scorpion nesting in the clothes pile or a black widow on the school playground. My electricity, gas, and water bill will force me to take out a second mortgage. Someone will get busted for dealing meth in my park, across my lawn - making me sigh and think no where in this entire city is out of the ghetto, no matter how high I climb. I'll come face to face with dysfunctional attitudes and people and be told repeatedly "It's a New Mexico thing." Then I'll have other people tell me that's all in my head and the work ethic is as strong here as in the North. (words fail me on that one). It will take 2 weeks to get a working furnace installed in my house in the dead of winter. A coyote will be stood in my back yard contemplating my chickens.

I get really tired then, and say, "you know, I'm going to pack up and take my children and leave you in the night you bastard. Really I am". I find myself asking bitterly what kind of sick people thrive here, immediately thinking of the entire city as ghetto and answering my own question. 

The random exceptions to this being people who are somehow unaffected by this place, certain midwives I know, or a few friends, who seem to break the laws of nature and have found their peace here. Then, I get on to myself for being bitter and I try and force myself to at least put a positive spin on that.

Look - you're a great person - really. It's me. I'm just not cut out for this relationship. I need my space, preferably near a beach that actually has a tide. I'll call, I promise. Send green chile.