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.

However, I am polite. So I responded to his greeting and asked him what he’d been up to for the past however long it’s been. “Just dateing a girl and workin.” I cocked an eyebrow at the air around me. Did he seriously open up communications again just to tell me he was “dateing” someone?

I’m happy for him. Truly. He’s one of those types who is desperate for a relationship, and he’d been looking for one ever since before I’d known him. I’m glad he’s found one, and I hope it’s everything he ever dreamed it would be. But there’s a niggle of irritation that rises in me when a person elevates a relationship to such a high pedestal status that it becomes the only thing worth talking about and living for.

Unfortunately that niggle of irritation fueled my inner snarkiness which resulted in this text in response. “Wal, that’s good you’re dating a girl and not a guy. That’d be awkward.”

Yep, the conversation died shortly thereafter. I don’t think that’s what he was really expecting, but what else was I supposed to say? Congratulations? Buy condoms? Let’s grab a drink and celebrate this momentous occasion?

I get it, okay. I do. Relationships can be fun and rewarding. And when you find the right one, relationships are nothing short of amazing – at least 60% of the time. The other 40% of the time you’re angry they won’t throw their dirty socks in the laundry and can’t bother to notice the fact that you spit-shined the kitchen floor. But when you need someone to hold your hand, lift heavy appliances and pretend to listen to all your problems, someone is there. It’s nice.

My problem is when finding a relationship becomes the driving source of a person’s daily routine. And when a relationship does materialize, my problem persists when it becomes the central focus of a person’s life. They stop talking to all the friends they had before they started a relationship. They don’t make any decisions without first discussing it into the ground with the significant other. They rearrange their entire life, let go of their dreams, wait hand and foot on the one they’re currently connected to…these are extremes. I know that. Except that I’ve seen these extremes unfold in reality, making them seem far less extreme and much more…well…reality.

I’m happy for my friend though he’s probably more of an acquaintance now. I suspect the reason he stopped talking to me six months ago was because of the new development in his love life which is fine. Really. I could only handle so many dead car battery conversations anyway. But a part of me wonders if he was just looking so hard for a relationship that he took the first one that came along regardless of how it fit.

And a part of me wonders if eventually, some day, I’ll do the same thing. I’m a strong, independent person, and I don’t wander around looking for a relationship like some of the people I’ve known. But, the older I get, the more tired I get of having washing machines fall on my head, talking all of my own problems out and holding my own hand to get through the unpleasant things in life.

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.

But this time I didn’t. I couldn’t. This time has been different than the past few times I’ve taken a blog-vacation. The past few times, I knew all I needed was what I just described above. I knew I just needed to give my writing brain a rest so it could come back with renewed creativity. But this time…I fall asleep at work in the afternoons. Did you know that? I’ll be sitting at my computer working on very important, life-altering agricultural documents when I crash into slumber, waking myself up 10-15, sometimes 20 minutes later with an extra-loud snore and a puddle of drool on my shirt. I’m not narcoleptic, and while I’m probably not getting enough sleep for physical me, I believe my brain is also very tired. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually – it is as tired as I’ve ever seen it, I think, and I don’t know that even the most amazing set of washboard abs can make a dent in that.

So I stopped writing two weeks ago. I haven’t written a single word of anything remotely creative and non-work-related until this post. And you know what? I have not missed it. I haven’t missed writing. I haven’t had even a ghost of an urge to put words together or shuffle them around until they fit together just so. The fact that I haven’t missed writing frightens me – mainly because, up until this break, I’ve always felt like a part of me was gone when I wasn’t writing. Even when I was rearming myself with creativity, I missed writing, and I’d anxiously wait for when my insides were ready to jump back into an ocean filled with words.

What would I do if I didn’t want to write anymore? I mean, obviously Shoelaces would fall off by the wayside. Having a blog when you don’t want to write is a waste. But more so, how would I live if I didn’t want to write? I have hundreds and hundreds of pages of writing that I’ll never show a soul. I don’t even show them to myself. They are strictly off-limits. I started writing these pages six years ago when I was facing some very difficult times. Grammar, form, beautiful phrases and flow are not a part of these pages. They are raw, painfully honest and honestly true. They are all the thoughts and ideals, dreams and emotions that chase themselves around inside my head all day long. Writing them helps me escape from them; writing them is my release. And so I ask again, how would I live if I didn’t want to write? Spontaneous combustion isn’t how I want to go, folks.

And so I’m here today, because I was at a fork. I’ve always been the sort to move forward with decisions rather than sit on my haunches and wait for some magic droplet from the answering bag to fall on my head. I’ve been sitting at this fork for two weeks – not having the desire to keep writing but digging in my heels about any other alternative. I would still be sitting at that fork if I hadn’t realized that by sitting there, I was effectively moving closer and closer to the alternatives.

These words…they echo in the far reaches of my memory, never fading into silence. Resembling fireflies caught in a mason jar, glowing in pain, glowing in tears, glowing when they shouldn’t be at all. Are they coming, or are they going? Always coming, never going. Round ‘em up! Circle ‘em! Shove ‘em through the gate! The gate…where’s the gate?

These words…they live in the bottom of a bottle, the windows of a car, the tiles of a ceiling. Living on a steady stream of thoughts and emotions, memories and reality. They need to vacate the premises, be escorted to the door, thrown out on their scraggly behinds.

These words…I don’t have any more words for these words. These words have landed a one-two punch to the gut. These words have proven to be more difficult to wrangle than a wild mustang. These words have exposed nerve endings thought to be cauterized.

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*

As people living the lives we’re given, change is something that becomes our close walking companion. We get new jobs, we pursue new careers, we date, we marry, we have families, we move across town, across the state, across the country, we exchange vehicles, we buy new clothes, more stuff, an extra grill and a refurbished lawnmower to replace the old one that didn’t have any brakes.

Even for those of us who don’t make big outwardly changes – those who stay in the same job and the same house for 50 years – the insides of ourselves are constantly changing. Our thoughts, our views, our emotions, our opinions – they are always changing, even when we don’t notice it.

And often we don’t notice it, not these inside changes. Not until we wake up one day, and we realize we aren’t the same person as we were yesterday. It seems sudden to us. It seems like an orange tossed across the plate after a thousand pitches made with a regular baseball. We watch the orange whoosh by, and we’re called for a strike because we were too busy being baffled by the presence of an orange in the game of baseball to think about swinging the bat.

But in reality, inside changes have been going on the whole time. Gradually shaping us and morphing us into the person who wakes up and wonders where the orange came from. Even if we can see the orange coming, it still takes time to adjust, because really, how do you deal with an orange in baseball?

Inside changes are difficult, because we can’t see them. We can’t run numbers or take a picture of inside changes the way we can of a new house or a reinstalled toilet seat. But we can feel them. We can feel it when something pops up inside that wasn’t there before, and we can feel it when something withers away and dies. A new way of being, all from something we can’t see.