They're gonna find you, just believe. You're not a person; you're a disease.
As memory may be a paradise from which we cannot be driven, it may also be a hell from which we cannot escape.
Sometimes just drifting back to simpler childhood things can make you feel better.
Today was one of the worst days of my life.
It all came crashing down around me this morning. A letter. A change forever. Thank God it wasn't worse.
I was driving to work and it hit me harder. Crying. Will it come back to bite me later? Something I'll eventually push to a corner of my consciousness, only to have it rear its ugly head in a few years? Maybe when I'm finished with college... When I'm getting married... When I have a family to worry about... Maybe never at all though. Maybe, but somehow that doesn't seem like my luck.
Stopped for a drink, thinking that would settle me. Nothing like strawberry smoothies to calm early morning jitters. It made me sicker. Gotta get to work though, what can I do? I slowed to drive through a neighborhood, a few minutes more in my own little hell.
A park. On the corner. Deserted, its a school day. No one should be there. Swings. Empty swings. Maybe some fresh air would help. I stop and carefully pick my way through the sand box, around the slides, through a patch of Arizona dead grass and traipse through the last bit of sand to the empty swings.
I sat, and slowly started to move back and forth. I held onto the chains, the metal links cold against my palms. I squeezed my hands tighter as I flew higher, the metal digging into my hands and leaving an imprint. Appropriate. I flew higher and higher, pumping my legs, wishing I could just fly away from it all. And I cried. The more I swung, the harder I cried. For a little girl who had to grow up too fast, a dad that wasn't there, and a string of men that she thought just might be prince charming, but turned into frogs. But mostly, I cried for who I am today. Flawed, hopelessly flawed. A mass of this, shards of that, fragments of what was, bits of what could have been. I've been broken, beaten down, and abused.
And yet, I'm still here. I'm still fighting.
I'm more me now, then I have ever been before.
And I might just be parts of many things, but those things are what make me whole. A beautiful, wonderful, amazing whole. I will never be perfect. I'm over that. I am me though.
As I realized that, I stopped swinging my legs and loosened my grip just a bit on those metal chains. The swing slowed, I got off, and life went on.
And I realized this: if I don't believe in me, who will? If no one else will stand for me, then I will stand on my own. I have more strength and more to offer than what most see. And even suddenly, that letter didn't seem quite so life changing anymore...more like just another hurdle on the track that I'll fly over with apparent ease. And it too will become another little piece, a fragment, of me, and I will be better, stronger for it.
Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.
Sometimes just drifting back to simpler childhood things can make you feel better.
Today was one of the worst days of my life.
It all came crashing down around me this morning. A letter. A change forever. Thank God it wasn't worse.
I was driving to work and it hit me harder. Crying. Will it come back to bite me later? Something I'll eventually push to a corner of my consciousness, only to have it rear its ugly head in a few years? Maybe when I'm finished with college... When I'm getting married... When I have a family to worry about... Maybe never at all though. Maybe, but somehow that doesn't seem like my luck.
Stopped for a drink, thinking that would settle me. Nothing like strawberry smoothies to calm early morning jitters. It made me sicker. Gotta get to work though, what can I do? I slowed to drive through a neighborhood, a few minutes more in my own little hell.
A park. On the corner. Deserted, its a school day. No one should be there. Swings. Empty swings. Maybe some fresh air would help. I stop and carefully pick my way through the sand box, around the slides, through a patch of Arizona dead grass and traipse through the last bit of sand to the empty swings.
I sat, and slowly started to move back and forth. I held onto the chains, the metal links cold against my palms. I squeezed my hands tighter as I flew higher, the metal digging into my hands and leaving an imprint. Appropriate. I flew higher and higher, pumping my legs, wishing I could just fly away from it all. And I cried. The more I swung, the harder I cried. For a little girl who had to grow up too fast, a dad that wasn't there, and a string of men that she thought just might be prince charming, but turned into frogs. But mostly, I cried for who I am today. Flawed, hopelessly flawed. A mass of this, shards of that, fragments of what was, bits of what could have been. I've been broken, beaten down, and abused.
And yet, I'm still here. I'm still fighting.
I'm more me now, then I have ever been before.
And I might just be parts of many things, but those things are what make me whole. A beautiful, wonderful, amazing whole. I will never be perfect. I'm over that. I am me though.
As I realized that, I stopped swinging my legs and loosened my grip just a bit on those metal chains. The swing slowed, I got off, and life went on.
And I realized this: if I don't believe in me, who will? If no one else will stand for me, then I will stand on my own. I have more strength and more to offer than what most see. And even suddenly, that letter didn't seem quite so life changing anymore...more like just another hurdle on the track that I'll fly over with apparent ease. And it too will become another little piece, a fragment, of me, and I will be better, stronger for it.
Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.