Shoelaces for Josie

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.

What is too much? How do you measure too much? I can measure too much chocolate syrup on my ice cream or too much dip for my chips – if I still have dip on my plate and the chips are gone, then there’s too much dip.

I can measure too much rain. I look in my rain gauge, and I take stock of the ground and the absorption levels and calculate the amount of rain up to this point. When it’s flooding, there’s too much rain.

I can measure too much coffee. I’ve had too much coffee before. My heart flips and twists and races far too quickly. I get jittery and restless. I pace and feel like a heart attack is coming – whatever that feels like. I’ve never had one, and I hope I never do – but I can measure too much coffee.

But how do you measure too much work? Is too much when you shove aside everything else for the sake of your work? How do you measure too much emotion? Too much money? (They say there is no such thing. I disagree.) Too much family time? Too much time spent on things with too little significance?

I have too much going on right now. It’s too much. I know that. I’m admitting that. I want to talk about all this too much-ness, but I can’t. Or I won’t. Mostly I can’t. And it doesn’t matter that I can’t. Well, it does, but it’s how the dice have been rolled, so…it doesn’t matter. Maybe just by admitting that I have too much will help. Even if it’s just a little help, that would be a good thing, I think.

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*

• I’m glad he didn’t kill me. He had sociopathic tendencies, but for all the things he did, I’m incredibly grateful he didn’t murder me. I think that would have been particularly unpleasant.

• I am a woman who lives alone and travels alone (mostly). I am a vulnerable target. An easy target. I need to make a few changes to lessen that vulnerability, to know that should someone decide to make a target of me, I would have the capability to make their success far less attainable. Something like skills with a bo-staff and nun-chucks would probably be the most obvious choice.

• Think critically. Trust less easily, always question, decide for myself.

I internalize things, I suppose. Awhile back, someone got all up in my grill about my internalization, saying something to the effect of, “Dude! Why do you not talk about things? That’s not a good way to live life!” Psh, man, whatever…

Nature versus nurture – was I born this way or was I shaped this way? Some of this, a little of that, is my philosophy. It’s true, I don’t talk nearly as much as the valley girl down the street. I don’t bounce into a room, interrupt everybody’s conversations and dither on about something great that happened or whine at length about something ungreat. But it’s untrue that I don’t talk. I do. Sometimes, and lately a lot of the time, it’s just not to another person. Sometimes, it’s to Doc. Sometimes, it’s to the rearview mirror of White Flash. Sometimes, it’s to the computer. And sometimes, it’s not at all. Sometimes, you just can’t talk. Everybody has those moments. Most people have those moments anyway. I think.

Something good happened to me today. I haven’t told anyone yet. I will. Some day. But every time I reached for the phone to text Intern or call R or whisper some sort of “Hey this happened!” note, I’d erase my message, close the phone and go back to work. I guess today I just didn’t feel like talking. In a way, that makes me a little sad as I see this trend popping up more and more.

I don’t want to be that person who can’t ask for help when something bad happens, and I don’t want to be that person who doesn’t let others in on the excitement when something good happens. We need people in these lives we lead. We need people to support us and to be there with us, and maybe that is what frightens me. I’m scared to need people.

The thing is, San Francisco really is like that. Sort of. It’s got crowded streets and the Golden Gate bridge. Bay windows and doors slamming. California can be a funky place and not just because of the purple hair. Things move at a different pace here than where I grew up and, while I can exist in this different-rhythm world, it’s far removed from the laid-back swing-style way I live my current life. And that’s okay. It’s not wrong or bad or weird. It’s just different…just different.

But it makes me miss my home. It makes me miss having a road wide enough I don’t have to check all three mirrors eight times every second while driving. It makes me miss being able to step out my back door in my skivvies without having an entire street document the fact I haven’t shaved my legs in four days. It makes me miss the smell of clean air and freshly-turned dirt. It makes me miss being able to wrap my arms around my pillow, watch the stars through my window and listen to the crickets sing.

It can be hit and miss, this longing for home. I’m not sad I’m here. I’m not sad I took this trip or that I’ve spent the last several days living out of a suitcase, staying at sketchy hotels and driving thousands of miles. Knowing everything I know now, I’d still take this trip without a second thought.

But days like today? I jump into my pants with both feet, and then I hit the ground running. Not because I’m skittering around getting 800 things accomplished, but because my brain is throwing thoughts and ideas at me like a major league pitcher.

And today I forgot my helmet. I feel wrung out, trying to coordinate this and do that and squeeze all these other things in between. Just about when I think I’ve got things settled into their rightful places, I remember articles that need written, packages that need put together and items that need purchased.