She Tells All

Don’t tell anyone, but I have no idea what I am doing. I am in this new job and every morning I arrive, as soon as I come through the door, I am walking through water. My legs feel heavy, my heart begins to pound, my skin gets this hot, clammy feeling and I wonder if I am going to get through the day alive. Does anyone else ever feel that way? I don’t know what the hell i am doing. Or maybe I do know, but because of fear I can’t seem to use the talent I have. So, why the hell am I still there? They say it takes a year to really get good at teaching. They say that the first year is, in fact, survival. But how I am supposed to even survive when I can’t think straight enough to find a freakin’ dry erase marker? How can I survive when every single comment a teenager makes about me or the lesson or whines about something completely unrelated in the middle of class, it feels like a hot stick poking at my heart. Why am I there when a parent calls and maliciously attacks me for no reason? And I am left stripped and bare and about an inch tall, cowering under my desk. Why am I there if the kids refuse to even write a freakin paragraph and complain about my clothes. Why am I there if I am so afraid all the time? They say the first year is survival, but I can’t find the oxygen to wait that long. Is there another way? Or do I have to sweat and pound and wonder when I will feel normal again, every day?

I have this throbbing
This aching that will not stop

Oh, I have tried
How I have tried
With chocolates
And friends and hookah and wine

I have tried
With good books and movies
And prayer and sunshine

This throbbing won’t let me go
Won’t let me know
How to satisfy
This singular crave.

A hungry dog, this knave, growls out of the insides of me
Prowling around for some way to ease the pain
Prowling around for some way to slay the thirst
That won’t go away.

It won’t let me go
Won’t leave me alone
And I cannot find the reason why
You cannot stop this ache inside
With so much dreaming and searching
And wanting I cannot hide.

Can it be you who ties the ends of tattered dreams together
And gives them back to me, the bright blue packaging
Unharmed and intact.

Can’t it be you who calls out this ache
For what it is
Can’t it be you who meets me here
With your own desires and tears
Longing and loving and grown-up fears

Tears that want to be caught in a tender palm
Can’t it be your hand that wipes mine away
Who catches my head as it hits the pillow
Who dreams my dreams and lives my songs
And gives them back again.

Until the growling and the prowling
Can finally be swallowed
By sighs of comfort
By moans of pleasure
By swells of passion
By songs of joy
By stillness and silence
And quiet contentment

And me
Next to you.
Looking out into our future
Together.

Why can’t it be you?

My car died last week. It was not the most stressful or surprising thing. After all, I had been ignoring its whines and screeches for at least a month. Until finally, it was just done.

Now, i am wondering, Do I really need a car? As I went for a walk yesterday with the weight of these worries on my mind, struggling with the financial stress a new car would put on me, a thought came to mind: (Actually, more like a proposition) What if you went without a car this summer? You know you will be able to afford a car in the fall, but this summer will be tight anyway, even without forking out payments on a car, let alone the crazy gas prices. Couldn’t you use the bus? Couldn’t you car pull? When this idea came to mind, my stomach muscles relaxed. The top of my head felt opened, like someone removed a steel cap from its top, and my thoughts no longer raced. I felt freed from having to make a decision RIGHT NOW about which car to buy. The stress seemed to untangle itself from my mind and I could breathe easier, and I heard the meadowlarks’ song around me as I walked through open space.

This morning I printed off a bus schedule, called a friend to see if I could borrow his car for an appointment I have next week, and headed out the door to the coffee shop where I work. On the way, I had some laughs on the bus when a local high school special ed group were calling out inappropriate and hilarious comments to the driver and I flirted with their sweet male, green-eyed teacher. You just can’t get that when driving alone in your car.

I’m wondering if there are some gifts waiting to be restored to me through the temporary loss of my car. Patience, calm, more community interaction, humility (when having to grub for a ride), learning how to ask for help. Not to mention the economic and environmental value. Not that I will never have a car again, and not that I don’t understand the need and the convenience of a car (although you pay in many ways for that convenience I have found). I am just feeling at the cusp of something I need. I need less stress in my life. I need more simplicity. I need to not be paying for something I don’t really need. I need to learn how to be grateful when I do have the luxury of a car. And to recognize that a car really is a luxury, and not a necessity for me. When I lived in Europe, I saw more from the windows of street cars and studied the culture more within the walls of a subway. I saw more detail on buildings, took in more air and got more exercise by walking between stops and to my downtown destinations. I am wanting to be restored to a lifestyle I can feel good about. And I think a break from driving for a while will get me out from behind my greedy-needy self and out into the ‘real’ world, where I have to work a little harder to get from point A to point B. Maybe I will see more, take more time to do things that indeed ’should’ take time, and learn how to breathe in what’s around me.

I just got back from Florida
Where everyone goes
When they are sick of the cold
And the wind and the ruggedness of this Colorado country
Disappeared below me in the starry night

I went looking for love and sweat and warm nights and palm tree breezes
And I came back with a sunburn and a cold from the change in climate

I went looking for a special glance from some man
From someone who saw me apart from the rest
But instead collected steely looks from grey-haired goofs
Who have nothing better to do than question
My intentions in that Florida town

I went looking for love and sweat and warm nights and palm tree breezes
And came back with a suitcase of decongestants and soothing aloe oil
To keep me from burning.

I want to get at the center of who I am
And tap from the wells of beauty
Where valleys of lush green and silver waters rush forth,
Fearlessly.

In this place are a few deeply-rooted trees
I can walk among
They have dug their heely roots into my own truth
That is in me and refuses to be shaken by Fear.

And lately, there are saplings
Pushing through the hard-cracked crust
Reaching for the sunlight - hesitant but willing
To try.

And there are weeds, horny thorny things
That spring up where there is a chink,
In the spots I have ignored all these years.
They crowd my growth and strangle this Newness.

I still have places of sandy, infertile ground
Places I have not dared to look at
Places I have left barren and unnoticed
Places that are lonely and isolated
Places I have not yet opened,
Opened to the changeable sky.

I want to look, I want to let the light in.

I am asking the trees of comfort and protection
To shield these places from the winds of insecurity,
The storms of rejection
The bitterness and resentment of laws and rules

From the fears of falling, of falling endlessly.

My fear of falling endlessly has kept me far from the edge
Locked up, dangerously safe
Tied down by my own ropes
Made of the fear of ‘what-if’

This fear of falling endlessly
Has forbidden my big toe
From dipping into waters
I’ve always thought to be cold

Or, even worse, to be warm and inviting…

This fear of falling endlessly
Has kept me from leaping into warm waters
For fear of drowning in the pleasures below

What would happen then?
If I let myself fall into this pleasure?
If I would plunge straight in, trusting my own self
If I were left, finally, to my own devices?

Others would be looking on
They would not know me from
The rule-book living I have done

They would not recognize these bright eyes
Caught up in joy and comfort and sweet pain
And pleasure I have now sunk into

Disapproving glances
Would glance off my shield of self-trust
Harsh words no longer absorbed
No longer swallowed
No longer are my food.

Instead, my food is the live stuff
That grows and moves and makes me dance and laugh and cry
That feeds this abandoned soul of mine
Who has come to life
Suddenly, and without apology.

Her food will now be Truth.
That she is Love, Beauty, Desire, Able,
Trustworthy, Strength, Living.
Her food will be taken from those rivers within,
Fruit from the branches that shield her.

And she and I will fall,
Together,
Endlessly.

The last time I can remember peeing my pants was in middle school. I know, I know, by that point I should have been done with that. However, for some reason, despite my attempts to empty my bladder completely before gym class, gravity always did its worst. You see, it was the dreaded jump ropes: they were to blame! Somehow the up and down, the jumping, in other words, did something to my bladder and before you knew it… yep, you guessed it: the streams were a-flowin. How horribly embarrassing! Not that I ever admitted it to anyone, but it didn’t take much in middle school to embarrass me. I was embarrassed in my own little embarrassing world of me….weren’t we all? Today, I had a couple of incidents that took me back to my middle school/elementary school years. Read the rest of this entry »

I love snow. Yes, it throws a wrench in my day. Yes, I have to get up a little earlier to dig myself out. But, it is so worth it. I know the spring is supposed to be about new beginnings. But for me, the first green buds don’t hold a candle to the first snowfall.

Because when the snow blankets my neighborhood, everything looks different. My street is almost unidentifiable. Suddenly it really doesn’t matter that I never got around to raking the backyard or weeded along the front walk, or washing my car. Waking to fresh snow gives me permission. Gives me permission to take a slow walk in my rubber boots, all bundled up like a five year old in mismatched hat and gloves and scarf. I don’t have to look svelt or fit or have the newest cool outfit. And while I walk, I breathe in the cold, take it into my chest, and am restored. The snow gives me permission to not worry about how much I will get done in a day. Because, let’s face it, it doesn’t really matter if that one thing is left undone anyway: it helps me say Who cares? I need more “Who cares?” in my life of control and frenetic lists and taking on the weight of the world. I need more deep breaths and walking through fresh snow and admiring the amazingly huge icicles coming off my roof. I need the crystal clear of new snow, the crystal clear of new beginnings.

What is this thing called Hope that stretches us thin
That makes us do the impossible
That keeps us from sliding gliding away

What is this person called Christ
Who shares in our fears our dreams our desires
These sinewy tendons, outstretched, holding us together

What can I do but recognize the weight of this world
And be glad it is not my strength carrying it
And wrap up safe within the womb he has made for me

To carry me through.

I have been struggling with anxiety this semester. This is not a new thing for me. I have gone through periods of anxiety and depression since my junior year of high school. What I am finally realizing about it, at the age of almost-32, is that I cannot, I repeat: I cannot, be my own shrink. What is worse than thinking about your thinking and feeling things about your feelings? No, I cannot listen to my tiny brain-analyst. Who knows if it’s telling me the truth? I need a real one.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the picture frame
Smiles back at me
A woman full of confidence
And vigor,
Looking out at the world
That is hers to conquer

And I don’t know who she is.