Shoelaces for Josie

At first it was hours. Those hours stretched into days, those days stretched into weeks, the weeks into months and now, those months have stretched into years. I wasn’t aware, really. I’ve been hunkered down, my shoulders hunched against the wind and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Imagine my surprise when I looked up and realized years had slipped past me.

I didn’t think the journey was going to be one spanning years when I first started it. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have signed up for it…as with most things in life, if we truly knew what we were getting into, we’d never crawl out of bed.

But it has been years, as I realized a handful of days ago. And time has only resulted in me sitting in this slowly sinking boat alone, adrift in the sea with a stub of an oar and a moth-riddled life vest. I’ve been putting my tin lunch pail to good use, bailing out the water to stay afloat, but now that I’m aware it’s been years of work on the end of a tin pail?

It’s time to let it go. All these things I’ve been hanging on to, it’s time to let them go, set them free, set me free. It won’t be easy. Nothing about this journey has been remotely close to easy, and it will be difficult to watch that boat drift away, a boat no longer in danger of sinking without my hefty bag of weight overwhelming it. It will be difficult to tread water in the sea I don’t want to be in. It will be difficult to force myself to float on my back until I drift up on shore.

It will be difficult, and though my hands are trembling a bit as I type this, there is an edge to my eyes, a steely reserve in the set of my shoulders, a softly whispered mantra chasing itself back and forth in the space between my ears. It’s time to let it go, and I won’t back down.

Even if I break down and cry? Even if I drive too fast, drink too much and yell too loud? Even if I watch Grey’s Anatomy marathons, skip work and get in fights? Yes…even if.

But lately, temporary has not been my friend. I don’t like hearing it knock on my door. I pretend like I’m not home and when it keeps knocking, I start to grump around and then I mope and then I open the door to see what it wants.

Temporary homes, temporary relationships, temporary appliances, temporary jobs. We lead temporary lives. There’s no getting away from that, I know. But I used to embrace the temporariness. Oh not the fact that my time here on earth is temporary – I’d like my life to stretch on as long as it’s meant to, but I used to look forward to the next move, the next relationship, the next washer and dryer set, the next job. Today – and yesterday – and tomorrow, I do not look forward to the temporary shoes my life seems to be wearing.

I’m tired of opening the door to another new home, looking around at all its imperfections and thinking, “Well, this will be okay until I find something that fits better.” I’m tired of looking across the dinner table at my date and thinking, “Well, he’s okay for now.” I’m tired of looking for new appliances and new jobs. I’m tired of all the uncertainty temporariness brings.

In the meantime, I’ve started a new thing. I know, be careful, I’m going all Superwoman on your hiney.

I started another online project. It’s a book blog. It’s cool. If you like books. If you don’t, then go sit in the corner and count to 8 hundred million thousand and then we can be friends again. I used to read. All the time. It got me into a lot of trouble when I was a kid which is totally irrelevant to your life and absolutely central to mine. But not as central as breathing, chocolate, showers and those cute fuzzy little slippers. The thing is, Adult Me doesn’t read that often. Adult Me pretends like she doesn’t have time or doesn’t want to or should be doing something more important.

The turmoil roiling around in my brain is accomplishing a similar effect in my chest. My stomach alternates between rushing upward, only to plummet to the bottom at gut-wrenching speeds. Questions and thoughts and emotions chase each other around until they’ve woven an intricate web that tightens with each pass they make. Where do I go? I couldn’t be happy moving back into town. Could I? Maybe if it was for a little while. Sadness. What path through school should I take? After Friday’s dampening experiences, should I even continue? Hurt… how… life… when… living… where… work… Doc… questions… questions… more questions…

As I try to sort through the things racing each other without strangling myself, I continually stumble across the same question: What do I want? It’s a simple question. One that probably has a simple answer – actually it does. I don’t know. There’s nothing quite so simple as a three-word answer. What do I want? I don’t know. Not really. Not anything I’m prepared to put into words.

Sometimes I whisper things to the ceiling at night, into the safety net of darkness. But when it comes to the big questions I’m facing right now, I freeze up. I try to ask myself what I want, and my brain shuts down. It’s easier that way. If I can live in this state of not knowing what I want, then it’s okay to drift along because I’m waiting for the answer to whatever it is that I want. But as soon as I have that answer, then it’s no longer acceptable to drift. If I know what I want, then there’s no longer any reason to do anything but pursue the answers to that simple question.

It sounds easy. Get the answers to what I want, and then paddle like crazy to get there. But…what if? What if the answers to what I want are something far-reaching, high and pie-in-the-sky? I know me. I know how I operate. The possibility is painfully probable that my answers to what it is I want will be hard to attain. I’m not afraid of hard work; I’m afraid of failure. Who isn’t? Failing a classroom test or dropping the ball on a work project is one thing. Failing to reach the dreams that hold the key to your heart and soul? Devastating.

And yet, I find myself at a fork on a road that is under construction. The Drift Along fork is closed, and the What I Want fork is riddled with ruts, big rocks and sharp turns. But I refuse to sit here at this fork and wait. I won’t wait for the construction to end on the Drift Along fork, and I won’t wait for the ruts to be smoothed out on the What I Want fork. I’m bad at waiting. I was not built for waiting.

So I’m trying to untangle the banshee-screaming that is my current cranial state. It is not a chorus, but I keep telling myself that if I continue to work on it, I will some day be able to sort it all out. I will be able to twist all the craziness in my brain into some sort of order. I will be able to lift my hands and weave together a chorus that doesn’t sound like all the dishes fell out of the china hutch simultaneously.

I’m tempted to start with the flutes. They’re light, easy to work with – small, manageable questions with easy-to-handle solutions. But to do this right, I need to tackle the root and all the banshees are living in the percussion section.

*sigh*

Thinking in dollar signs can be dowdy, though. It’s a totally grown-up thing to determine if a decision is practical from a financial standpoint. There is very little room for irresponsibility and immaturity when you think in dollar signs – usually because irresponsibility and immaturity seem to come shackled to a large price tag.

I’ve been thinking in dollar signs so long that I hardly recognize it any more. Many of the decisions I’ve made are rooted in The Big Green – continuing to live in Washington, not upgrading my vehicle, living where I do. I’m not a cheapskate. Oh by some people’s standards (a lot of people?), I would be the definition of cheap or stingy. I am frugal. It’s quite rare for me to not analyze my purchases – partly because I’m careful with my money and partly because I don’t really like cluttering my life with stuff I don’t need (that tendency is courtesy of my other tendency to move around a lot). And because I just really don’t care if I have a set of 16 matching dishes or the best entertainment center.

But I’m not a cheapskate, not compared to the way I was raised. (My parents aren’t cheapskates either, necessarily. They’re just cattle ranchers which takes all the decision-making out of it.) I treat myself. I go on road trips, and I occasionally splurge on frivolous shopping sprees. I got a dog, and goodness knows those things aren’t cheap.

And yet, on the big things, I still think in dollar signs. I look at situations and decisions from all angles to see if there’s a more financially beneficial way to approach them. Generally this is at the cost of aspects that can’t be measured in dollar signs – like…panoramic views out my kitchen window, convenience or a place that fits me better than it fits my bank account.

Maybe I think in dollar signs, because it is easy to measure. You either have $2 in your wallet or you have $8. Black and white. There or not there. But feelings? Emotions? The inner workings of my mind and my heart? Impossible to measure. Impossible to predict. Impossible…just impossible.

Maybe I think in dollar signs because that’s how I was taught.