And This

Driving home today, right as I turned onto Common, from East, it hit me.  My soul playlist was on and it just hit me.  I don't even know what it was, because I've taken precautions so that no single song will show up that is going to remind me of anything. Driving and being emotional do not mix.  And usually, I shrink away when this happens.  If you run away, it isn't happening, right? This has been an effective strategy for me up until now.

I've preached about running away, how it doesn't work, how it isn't helping, and that eventually, it will catch up with you and it will not be pretty but I couldn't take my own advice.  It's easier to pretend everything is ok.  It all went to shit in January and since then, I've been trying to figure out how to right my entire world.  And you know what? It doesn't make me weak to admit that I was upended in January and have been since then.  I'm not weak for saying that and it's taken me a long time to understand that.

If we're being honest, I've been upended since November. I've been in constant free-fall and only in the past few days have I finally started to hit ground.  A strange sensation, of being able to feel solid-ness beneath you, when just the opposite has been your norm.  Today, I sat in my car, as I drove home, and I let everything hit me at once, from November to right now, the end of July.  I really felt it, and it really sucked.  I mean, really sucked.  I went home (well, not home, but to the house I'm currently in charge of) and I refused to let anyone come over.  I needed to be alone, to let this fully happen to me.  And let me reiterate, it really sucked.  Hitting the ground after months of being in the air is not a pleasurable experience.

But I hit the ground, and I lasted through it.  And I'm okay, and I will be okay.  It's a lot easier to keep running, gulping air and water and the few respites you get.  It's a lot harder to face your reality, to understand that something has happened, something has changed.  And to go on.
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Shea asked me today if we were all really going to die.  We were bowling with this little wooden set he got a few years ago that has different little monsters you get to position and hit, and he stopped and said, "Are we all really going to die? Someday?" And I froze because sweet ten year old boys aren't supposed to ask their babysitters those questions.  I couldn't ask his parents what to say, so I floundered for a second and then gave him the truth.  "Well...Yeah.  We're all going to die."  He looked unperturbed, amazingly, and then continued on, "But... Will you die before me? And what will happen to you if you do?" And when I said that nobody knew the answers to those questions, and nobody really could, he said, "Okay, I guess we can just bowl, for now."
That's kind of what life is, right? I'm hoping it is.  I'm hoping the world gets more ten year olds like him.  God knows we need it.
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"I can hear you when I wake up,
In the distance, like the ocean,
You calling me back to your side,
Holding my breath in the night,
I listen again for your song."

Everything Stays

I sit at the granite island in the early afternoon; unsure of what I should say.  I never know what to say, I never know what I'm supposed to do and I'm just pretending.  I'm only nineteen; I'm not mature enough to know how to be a good person, right?
I've decided to stop using that excuse.  Nineteen is a bullshit age in a bullshit world and it would be a little less bullshit if we all stopped using our ages as scapegoats.
At this point, I'm just trying to make it through the days.  My world is a haze of never-ending stuff; kids and work and dishes and pancakes, rivers and sunburns and cooking and my mothers hands, broken bottle-openers and scorched lighters, fireworks embedded in my skin, painting and submarines, octopuses and rashes, blonde hair and wasps, hammocks and porch swings. It's too much, it's all too much, but since when is anything ever manageable?
I couldn't manage my siblings; they just thought I was a bossy little girl (true, unfortunately).
I couldn't manage my depression without a therapist, without meds.
I couldn't manage my life schedule without my mother.
So here I am, just trying to get to that point in the day when I can collapse, sunburnt and spent from telling children what to do, from figuring out their plans and food and sunscreen, finding the towels and cats and getting them to wear their seatbelts.
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Bri told me that there was peace in everything.  I think she's right, in a way. Or maybe she's not, who knows.  But it gave me a small comfort, and these past few days, were the eye of the storm that is currently my life.  Albeit, a few days isn't a very long eye in the wake of four months, but it was something, and I knew it when I saw it.  I grabbed it and soaked it in and everything was better, just for then.
If there's one thing I've learned from my myriad of mental health problems, it's that you just have to take today.  Yeah, yesterday probably sucked, and yeah tomorrow probably will too.  But if today isn't so bad, or a small moment of today isn't so bad, you take it.  The kids might start screaming in the next few seconds or you might run out of gas on a highway, but that tiny moment can make a world of difference.
We all need those eyes, in the middle of storms.
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Blood//Bones//Ribs

A moon carved out of cheese, the curve of your lips

the scratch of wax paper, softness of your pillow

the shape of your nose, accumulations of cat hair

penguin sheets, a too-loud fan,

Stripped to their atoms, piles of my bare bones;

all I can think of is you.

It doesn't matter who or what this is about; all that matters is that it exists.
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"ever so slightly, daily and nightly,
In little ways, when everything stays"

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.