Skateboarding Through Mud

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind. – Maya Angelou

I’ve finally discovered the source behind my blogger’s block. I simply don’t know how to blog about being active, relatively happy and constantly busy. Blogging about nature walks and wandering thoughts, I can definitely do. Picking up a skateboard, going back to college and signing up for a mud run seem more like topics for a Facebook post instead of an interesting blog post.

Oh yes, I said skateboard. I quit smoking for the final time and I’ve decided to replace smoking with a significantly less cancerous but only slightly less dangerous hobby. I forgot when choosing this sport that my body is 28 years old and stubbornly resists contact with concrete. As I teeter precariously atop my tiny, rocking slab of wood and slide ever more rapidly down tiny hills, I’m increasingly aware of the fragility of my poor, weary bones. After one day of practice, I felt accomplished just knowing I spent slightly more time on the board than running away from it and watching it careen wildly into a curb or tree.

This is a challenge. One that I did not even attempt to surmount as a kid. I think I got on a board maybe twice, and after I found that I would not automatically know how to carve the sidewalk into waves of owned pavement, I gave it up. Looking back, “giving up” seemed to be the most important pattern in my young life. Anything that I didn’t show immediate talent for or didn’t have a hope of being The Best at, I gave up. Singing was my secret career goal and I accepted myself as mediocre without ever demanding an impartial audience. Dance, I quit. Playing the tuba, I quit. Cheerleading, I quit but that was totally legit. I was too sarcastic and nerdy to ever be okay with cheerleading. Sports, I didn’t even try. I learned to ride a bike before memory, so it was as natural as breathing for me. I loved the wind in my hair and the freedom of flying down the streets of my suburbia to Anywhere (within a 5 mile radius). And yet, I wouldn’t even fathom the idea of attempting BMX-style tricks or something more complicated. I played tackle football and roller hockey with the neighborhood boys and read. I read for hours and hours. During the summer months, I read fantasy novels and played Flashlight Tag. During school years, I read the English textbooks during the first few weeks of class and everything I could find that looked even a little interesting from the school library. That is the sum all of my childhood years.

It may be crazy and you can call me suicidal, but I’m determined to see what I am capable of completing. I’m tired of re-routing around dead ends before I even see the detour signs. So, that brings me back to skateboarding and mud runs. Mud run competitions are a fantastic way to remember you are alive and they require much more than a good set of lungs. So, I’m going to try out being an athlete for awhile. I’m going to skate, run and climb. Tomorrow morning, my skateboard will be by the front door and I will be sure to plug in a few hours trying not to die while slipping and sliding around wide corners. I’m going to fall and I may not be The Best, but I’m going to give it a damn good try.

Dragging Thoughts

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.  ~Mark Twain

There is a tiny, ferocious ball of stress sitting right over my heart. I can feel it with each breath, spinning endlessly in a whirlwind of worries. Aside from the stress I have a tendency to collect and keep as a pet, I am genuinely stretched thin. School, studying, work, friends, eating better, working out, volunteering….I’m finding dropped balls every time I turn around. I, of course, place my priorities where I need to; school comes first, work comes second and so on. I worry about deciding on a major, about not writing anymore, about neglecting people in my life, about the current economic situation, about the future, etc., etc., etc.

I know what you’ll say. Stop worrying. You can only do so much. Concentrate on what is important, leave the rest to work itself out. I tell myself these things already. It doesn’t do much good when my Government assignment is forcing me to read article after article about the budget shortfall and the education cuts in my state. Everywhere people are scrambling and panicking and I didn’t even know. I mean, I’d heard, but had it settled into my awareness? Not really. Suddenly I feel galvanized to action, ready to adopt a cause, ready to set out on a path to save the world! Then, I think about school, and work, and I’m right back to where I started.

So, I figure what the hell, right? Try writing about it.

Apartment 3B

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.  ~Anatole France

 

Early on this year, I moved into my new home. Just another apartment in a long line of apartment complexes, with one notable difference – near total silence. An unnerving quiet sat heavily over the new development. Most of the buildings were empty and in a state of wary anticipation. The fresh outdoor paint glistened wet and shiny. The pale-grey pavement celebrated each day, yet to be soiled by the stains of leaky car fuel and peeled tire rubber. It was eerie and blissful. Each night I would walk onto my patio and breathe in deeply, listening to nothing specific. Cars in the distance thrummed away, softly and quietly on their way to Any Other Place. The few inhabitants in my complex were, for the most part, home already.

Tonight, I am thinking back on those days with longing. Just yesterday, I was startled out of my apartment by the terrified and hopeless screams of a small child. I searched upstairs and below, looking in confusion for the source of the screams I had initially ignored. After a ten minutes of fruitless searching, I reluctantly returned to the warmth of my apartment. The child still screamed, but the cries had diminished in volume and the echoes made it impossible to locate the source. The only thing I’d determined was that it definitely came from an apartment near to or within my building. I stepped out on my patio again to see if I could hear more, something to help make my decision, only to discover that it had been made for me. No less than three police vehicles, one ambulance and one firetruck sat directly below me. Lights flashing urgently but not a peep of a siren, the men stood outside their vehicles, whispering furiously into their walkies. I shouted down at them, “Is this about the kid I heard crying a minute ago??” They answered “Yes. But everything is fine now, ma’am.”

Skeptical, as I always am when faced with certain authority figures, I stuck around long enough to ensure that everything was indeed “fine”. Knowing I would never receive an answer, I didn’t bother asking what happened. I only hoped against hoped that the faceless child I worried about wasn’t soon to be carted away in that curiously inactive ambulance. I received no answers. I am left still wondering.

Tonight is an altogether different matter. For the last few hours, the sounds of heavy boots and low voices have been lumbering up and down the stairs outside my door. Above me, I hear the thud and drag of heavy objects being tossed or pulled about in seemingly no pattern whatsoever. Not wishing to be THAT neighbor, I’ve coolly kept my thoughts and irrational desires to slam objects against my ceiling to myself. I’ve seen no moving truck. No dinosaur-sized pieces of random furniture. Surely, they aren’t moving dressers weighing several metric tons. So what on EARTH could be making all that noise?? And at this time of night?

I realize in this single moment, I am no longer the carefree, stay-out-all-hours 21 year old I once was. I am now 27 going on 50. I am that crazy old lady in the neighborhood, the one you only see disappearing behind lace curtains.

In the end though, I think I prefer this inane noise over the glassy silence. It is the sound of life, the sound of things happening. It’s comforting to know that two doors down, a couple that argued vigorously last night has clearly made up. And that despite yesterday’s anguished cries of one little baby, peace has surely returned to Apartment 3B.

Puh-lease.

In the brisk-paced, fast food, instant coffee world of today, it seems we may have completely lost the ability to think for ourselves. Especially when it comes to politics. People seem perfectly content to have their opinions hand-fed to them from a straight ticket. Yes, you arrogant liberals, this applies to you. Yes, you mule-headed conservatives, this applies to you.

According to the most nut-job liberal, all Republicans are bumbling, redneck fools and if allowed to have their way, will ensure that we all end in one glorious, simultaneous burst of nuclear warfare.

We are all guilty of this ridiculous behavior. If Glenn Beck said it, if Jon Stewart said it, if Obama said it, if Bush said it….you’ll hear it all day long. Repeated ad nauseam, oft misquoted and definitely misrepresented,  it’s worse than a kindergarten Telephone Game.

 

We Are Sheep People

Obama will say a given day that he wants change and hope for the future and the next day the word on the street is that he’s promised to deliver us the moon. Better yet, the entire universe…cupped neatly in a silver spoon!  Bush condemns evil and acknowledges he believes in its inherent presence in the enemy and suddenly he is a psychotic cult leader, hell-bent on dragging us through religious war until we finally achieve what Alexander the Great almost did…world domination. Of course, I read in the newspaper yesterday a direct quote from Obama saying the same thing, yet it seems to have slid under the radar of the frothing Bush-haters.

Speaking of frothing…No one, and I mean NO ONE, has the ability to sell exaggeration like a rabid and frantic group of Right Wing Extremists. If you don’t believe in God, you’re against him. Obama is the second coming of Hitler, the gays are representative of the end of times and all liberals are tree-hugging hippies that deserve to be shot for speaking out against the country you love so dearly.

Puh-lease. Can we cut the drama for just two seconds? I mean, I’m going to start breaking out in hives from all the panic going on around here. It’s true that it is much easier to get our panties in a wad about something trivial than something important. When it is something important, it might mean you actually have to do something about it. The trivial tends to sort itself out in the end. So…we panic. We provide the grounds for  “fear mongering” to plant its roots. We panic about the president and the speeches and all the fluff. And in the meantime, we are sadly letting the heart of the issues clog up with fat and our poor bodies have to work twice as hard just to keep on surviving, to keep on beating.

Children in our country are starving. We actually have children that die because they can’t get enough food to eat. Doesn’t that blow your mind?? I throw away enough food at work or donate food at work that could keep them alive for a full year. We have a McDonald’s on almost every major street corner!  And yet we expend so much of our resources elsewhere…

I could go on. And on. But I’d be listing off the issues we all hear on a daily basis.  Our world is on shaky ground. We are in a longer war than anyone expected and many people are dying. Our children, our husbands, our families are suffering losses and most of the world is no longer able to sufficiently explain why. I know I’m confused.  I don’t have the answers and I don’t know who does. But I do know one thing for certain.  We have to care.  And we have to care about the right things in the right way. Not in a straight ticket way. In a reasonable yet passionate way.

My parents drilled an important lesson in my head from a young age. “Jennifer, you need to learn now. Life isn’t fair. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Life can and will be very hard. It is what you make of it.” So go on, and blame Obama. Blame Bush. Blame Reagan. Blame JKF. They are why your paychecks suck. Not the fact that you don’t want to put 100% into everything you do. Not the fact that we all seem to be looking most for that Get-Rich-Quick scheme or our 15 minutes of fame.

With all that in mind, why would are we wasting time and breath talking about the subtle nuances of a president’s jargon or our president’s skin color? Why are we talking about race at all? Aren’t we over that yet??

This is what I am thinking about right now. In a flash, in the tiniest of seconds, our lives could be over. In that time, what impact have I made? Whose life did I make better?  This feels far more important than the much easier to discuss topics of petty politics and celebrity gossip. Or voting exactly like one of the Baldwins tell you to.

Filling In The Blanks

I can see a field from the patio of my new apartment. It’s surrounded by fresh housing developments and distant countryside, but it’s there. I know it won’t be there for long, but it still makes me smile.

I wish I had time to write and think right now. In the few brief moments between Job Number One and Job Number Two today, I have time for a few things. I have time to eat. I have time to shower. I have time to watch a cooking show. But I do not have time to write. Documented introspection is a luxury that I can’t often afford.

I made a decision to change my life last week. It’s one I always wanted to make, but spent most of my time finding reasons why it was impossible. I’m certain it was my debilitating fear of failure leading the way during those excuses. Someone casually made me see it was not only possible, it was urgent. I’m going to go to college. I’m going now, while I still have enough of my twenties left to graduate in my early thirties. It’s like the clouds that surrounded me for years vanished and suddenly sunlight burst through, with a few simple words of advice.

I’m excited. I know what I’m going to do now. The exact when and what are as yet still blank pages, but I know no longer feel worried about how I am going to fill them in. The only important thing right now is that I know I am going to. I’m through wasting my intelligence on the lower rungs retail management and the random health care positions.

I have a direction. And more importantly, I finally have the drive.

What a Difference A Year Makes

“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” – William Somerset Maugham

I haven’t been feeling like writing lately. Or if I do feel like writing, I haven’t been able to keep my interest in the topic long enough to finish a post. I have 18 drafts of different blog posts at the moment. And I just added another one to that list. My life is busy now, filled with all those little things that sneakily stack up until you stop for a moment to wonder aloud, “Where has all the time gone?” I keep looking up to find another month past and not quite sure where or when it went.

It’s a great change from my recent past. This time last year, I was barely living minute to minute. Walking around every single day in an endless fog, I had plenty of time to write…and think. Oh, the endless thinking. I developed a deep obsession with my cellphone and computer, keeping them both with me at all times, desperate for any and all distractions from the thoughts running rampant through my mind. I remember one particular low point, when I went without the internet for about a week. I spent each day walking around like a zombie, muttering popular ‘Net acronyms under my breath in a comforting chant. Or something else less sad…

Surrounded by the strangers that once made up my family and in the middle of isolated, swampy Florida country, I was doing my absolute best to cope with the abrupt changes I’d recently experienced in my life. Like a tiny kid left alone in the deep end of a pool, I was frantically treading water, expending all my energy striving for each individual breath. My normally gabby and bubbly nature was not only absent – it felt as if it had never existed at all. I was positively monosyllabic for three months, if you can imagine. Flash forward just one year and the changes are radical. Wonderfully radical.

I’m pleasantly busy now. I enjoy my job and I love my roommates. I have a family again.  The kind of family that you create and makes you number yourself among the lucky ones. The kind of family that makes love feel like a gift and not an obligation. My “family” is most certainly not conventional (most are not blood-related to me in any way) but it is far more gratifying and meaningful than the one I happened into. I spent my holiday season putting up lights and decorations, eating delicious home-cooked meals, shopping, laughing, worrying, working and playing – and I did it all with people I love and that love me in return. I didn’t spend this holiday crying, fighting, or scared. I didn’t spend it feeling bad about myself or holding my tongue. I didn’t spend it waiting for the other shoe to drop…and it was a total relief.

I’ve finally cut out the drama in my life or at the very least, cut it down to a minuscule level. It may be a little more routine and a little less exciting, but after the last few years, I am blissfully willing to trade in a little excitement for the more mundane. The last five years weren’t very kind to me and I can honestly say that I don’t remember the last time I felt this happy. But I do now. Feel happy, I mean.

As far as resolutions go, this year I will settle for one.

I propose a toast. To strive toward a life of adventure and fulfillment, to not letting the precious minutes of my life go to waste. Time is a terrible thing to waste, or so I’ve been told, and I’ve got a monumental to-do list of things to complete before I die.

Hurricane Holiday & Rotten Peaches

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

Speaking of memories…

The holidays are here.

I assumed the holidays wouldn’t be easy this year and expecting that, I wasn’t all that surprised to have sly, sharp jabs of memories sneaking their way in over the last few days. While so many things in my life are going right these days, I also haven’t had much time to sit back, take a few deep breaths and acknowledge the few that aren’t. Those few struggles I do have are definitely the ones that tend to make the holidays a strange affair.

I don’t have the typical family problems around the holidays. You know the typical family problems; the family gripes, drama and panics that all culminate in singing carols in the living room on Christmas Eve and opening presents in p.j.’s on Christmas morn’. In fact, ever since I moved out of my home in my mid-teens, I rarely see family at all, much less for the holidays. I was very young when I started my own network of friends and trusted ones; creating my own family out of the supportive people around me. Is it the same? Sometimes, yes, and sometimes, no. Like anything in life, it has its pluses and minuses. It’s a pretty incredible feeling to know that the friends and loved ones I do have, love me back for no other reason than they want to. No one I know was obligated by blood or familial ties to care for and spend time with me. And yet, there they are. When I have a bad day, when I am pissy for no reason, when I want to play, when I have chattering nonsense to share; they are there to hug, admonish, laugh, and listen. So, all in all, I’m a very lucky girl.

But it doesn’t mean that I avoid the pangs of missing that blood obligation come winter. Something about family, knowing that they’ve seen your face change from a wrinkled babe, to a just-beginning-to-be-wrinkled 26 year-old, of having memories so old that they’ve become lore and no one really remembers how it went down – there is a comfort in that.

I feel compelled every so often to go walk up and down my childhood street. I resist the urge to sit on the front porch and look down the worn, grey street littered with fall leaves. I feel to need to pause in front of the house where I had my first babysitting job – and the one next to it where I regularly dog-sat – a strange house where I inadvertently saw my first Playboy (a mint collection many years in the making) and so shaped my idea of what men might really want.  Nearby, I would find the giant sewer drain where I smoked my first cigarette and the little creek where I had my first kiss. The stump across the street is all that remains of the pride and plague that was the largest, tallest tree in our neighborhood, and for all we knew, the world.  It was in that tree that the neighbor boys would climb, jump and, inexplicably, pee out of. I definitely wouldn’t mind a  glare at the peach tree in my old backyard, still resentful of too many afternoons picking up the rotten, fly-infested peaches that fell to the ground uneaten. To this day, I won’t eat peaches raw. But I always inevitably resist the compulsion and I don’t do any of those things. Although my childhood home isn’t that far from here, there is never a good time to walk down that particular memory lane. Especially when it’s fraught with so many potential potholes and detours of regret. And I can obviously do that just as well sitting in my room, thirty minutes away.

I’m not worried though. With every passing month, the memories of the past dim ever darker and I find a new reason to be excited about the future. Sometimes the lessons I’ve learned don’t reveal themselves right away. It’s a surprise I may stumble upon when I’m least expecting it and I find, to my pleased astonishment, that I’ve actually learned something along the way. Learning is a small, but gratifying reward for the pain of growing. Already a in the midst of a hurricane of activity and blessed to have incredible friends all around, these holidays will fly by and I am certain they will have all the moments of sweetness I could hope for – the memories from holidays past will only serve to remind me how far along I’ve actually come.

Forest Fires and Babies…

Just another dream in the life of Jen.

During my wonderful and many uninterrupted hours of sleep last night, my brain (apparently ecstatic with the much needed sleep) went into imagination hyper-drive. My dreams were a spinning, swirling mixture of what would be perfect TV show drama.

Dressed in a very red, very risque evening gown, I have a hazy memory of navigating a giant maze of a mansion. The mansion ceilings dripped in chandeliers that create a deceptive golden glow. Random people were all over the place, in little groups or all alone, littering the house like bits of lost, forgotten toys. While aimlessly wandering through this house, wondering just what I should be looking for, I met a few people I knew. We stood and chatted awkwardly. I could tell they felt as out of place as I did and we were all relieved to end the conversation and keep moving. Still wandering, I ran into a familiar smug smile from my past. After that unpleasant run in with an ex-fiance hell-bent on revenge , I found out much to my surprise I was pregnant. I’m not sure when the impregnating occurred, but in the world of dreams, logic is decidedly Alice in Wonderland-related at best. After a quick birth in the hospital, I didn’t have a moment to catch my breath. Taking my new, impossibly little baby girl and a bag, I was hustled out of the room. I was rushing but didn’t know why. Next thing I knew I was on a plane bound north, and suddenly I start panicking.

I don’t know what to feed newborns! I didn’t have a baby shower! I have no car seat, carrier or diapers. Every single thought I have is now consumed with pure panic about this tiny, soon-to-be-pooping-everywhere little baby in my arms. What do I name her? What kind of diapers do newborns wear? I start asking all the people around me, completely aware of and simultaneously not remotely concerned with my obvious fragile mental state. Think what you want about me, but just tell me what diapers to put on my baby! I’m getting raised eyebrows and big eyes, but I don’t care. Someone tries to discreetly answer my feeding question by raising a finger, indicating my upper chest. The light-bulb goes on and I look down excitedly to find— nothing has changed! Milk is nowhere to be found. I can’t feed my new baby!

The plane lands, we leave the airport and get in a rental car. We’re following long, winding roads somewhere in Michigan; giant statuesque pine trees surround us and the ground is a blanket of brown needles. I’m relentless in my demands to stop at a store where I can buy everything I may need to take care of my little “Amy”. No, not Amy. Becky? Ah, Madeleine. ‘Yes, it’s perfect.’ I decide to name her Madeleine as the car pulls up to a Piggly Wiggly nestled in the middle of this thick northern forest. We all get out and I start frantically hunting for whatever I can think of she might need. Jars of baby food she most likely can’t eat, baby powder, every kind of diaper I can see – it’s all going in the sack. All around me, the buzz of people chattering gets louder and more insistent, eventually snagging my attention and pulling me away from the shelves of confusing baby products. Cradling Maddie close to my chest, I wander over to the gathering group of people cautiously, trying to suss out the source of  obvious trouble without getting too close to the crush of bodies.

“Forest fire. And they won’t let us leave.” I hear this mumbled over and over and suddenly notice the strange heat coming from the opposite wall. I run to the door and lean outside. Listening intently, I hear a deep rumbling noise in the distance, not unlike the sound of a tumbling avalanche, except this avalanche is blanketing all in its path with burning fire instead of snow. Everything gets chaotic now. I’m the only one with common sense, trying to get in the car and drive in the opposite direction at top speed. The people I’m with insist we’d be safer inside. Out of nowhere, I start bleeding from leaving the hospital too early. All the police are too busy fighting the fire, I know they’ll never rescue me in time. I start dramatically telling people what to do with my baby, what her name is, and where she should go. Telling them to be sure not to spoil her and make sure she reads.  Dramatic pause…then, I woke up!

As I lay there, listening to the sound of one of my roommates playing with the dogs in kitchen, I played the dream over in my mind, holding tightly so it didn’t all fade away like dreams have a tendency to do. And, as I tirelessly do, I wondered what meaning this dream may have or what events stirred such a fantastic tale. I’ve gotten a fantasy trilogy out of a good night’s dream before, so this is nothing terribly new – but they are always worth noting. Mmmm….dreams.

Inside All of Us Is a Wild Thing

“Inside all of us is a Wild Thing.”

— Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are)

Where The Wild Things Are was at once everything and nothing that I expected. I expected it to be beautiful, and it was very beautiful. I expected it to be dark, and it was terribly dark. What I didn’t expect was how it would make me feel.

Sitting in that darkened theater, entranced like everyone else around me by the artistry and grotesque beauty of the film, I felt almost uncomfortable with the myriad of emotions it conjured up in me. Flashbacks to the most awkward moments of my preteen youth danced rapidly through my head and my chest. I distinctly remembered how it felt to be filled with many confusing emotions, all so near to the surface and warring constantly with one another to be on top. That period of time I usually treasure as footloose and fancy-free was very often fraught with unpredictable fear and paranoia, both valid and completely irrational – and I think we adults often forget that.

Even more striking was how time seemed to be in a different dimension then – each day an adventure, each hour a surprise. Sometimes an hour flew by so fast that dusk fell before you could prepare for it, catching you and your playmates altogether unawares. Suddenly it was time to go in and you weren’t ready for it, so a game of Flashlight Tag was hastily proposed. Or just as often, Time slowed to a creeping crawl. After cramming what felt like a month’s worth of fun and activity into just one hour, you felt changed somehow at the end of the day, barely recognizing your own face in the mirror. I remember I spent ridiculous amounts of time in front of the mirror as a child, reconciling what I saw with what I felt changing inside.

As I sat there, mesmerized by the depth of character found in those amazing puppets’ facial expressions, all those memories and more flickered in and out of my consciousness. The absolute, all-consuming fear of what may be hiding in the dark shadows under my bed came rushing back in a stomach tightening flood.  The euphoria of being found when I was lost and frightened, the confusion when presented with adults misbehaving, the desperation to be heard, to be noticed, to be loved…it all bubbled up to the surface of of my heart, reminding me that maybe those feelings had never strayed that far away after all. Reminding me that perhaps I’d just gotten better at ignoring it, or maybe just better at giving the unknown a name and a face, compartmentalizing everything in an effort to better make sense of the world around me.

I teared up at odd, unexpected moments in this world of the Wild Things where there is no clear bad guy or good guy, in this childhood version of the psyche where the battle for good and evil plays out in the jungle of your overwhelming heart and mind. As it is in real life, the life of the Wild Things is bittersweet, usually more bitter than sweet because they have the annoying tendency to eat their kings and they have no mommies. Carol, the impulsive, raging, angry, friendliest monster, was the easiest to relate to. No one plays the wronged, temper-tantrum-thrower like James Gandolfini. Something about Gandolfini’s voice and way makes even Tony Soprano, the murdering mob boss, lovable.  Carol moved me to tears, especially when he felt compelled to show Max the wooden city he’d built. It was a vision of what Carol wanted life to be, his paradise where everyone lives together happily in one house, they have fun all the time and sleep together every night in one giant pile.

Carol: It’s going to be a place where only the things you want to happen, would happen.
Max: We could totally build a place like that!

Without changing a single important piece of the story, director Spike Jonze and writer Dave Eggers, managed to subtly address the most common pain children experience today, the pain of divorce. We all forget, due to the frequency of it’s occurrence,  how terrible a toll divorce takes on the innocent victims, the children. Wild Things doesn’t let you forget. Especially the most important question children have, “Do you still love me just as much?”

For those of us adults still possessed of an active imagination and jealously harboring the bits of the child still left inside, Where The Wild Things Are is a strange, dark and yet beautiful journey into all of our not-to-distant pasts. And for those of you shaking your heads, muttering about your extended age and life experience,  don’t forget that the world is ancient and we are each nothing more than seconds on it’s considerable time line. Let the wild rumpus start!

Severing the Heart

“There are things that we never want to let go of, people we never want to leave behind. But keep in mind that letting go isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new life.” -unknown

 

For three years of my life, I felt vibrantly alive. More alive than I’ve ever felt, before or since. Every single day, for better or worse, was an adventure. I would wake up in the morning and my first thought never changed, although it felt like a revelation every time. Each emotion I had trembled through me; every feeling I had, magnified to an almost unbearable degree. Music and food had a new, deeper sweetness. The air smelled different, and the most mundane things in life took on new meaning. It was as if I had my heart and eyes taken from me and had them cleaned by a professional and then given back and suddenly I saw the world for the first time. All this when I never knew they were dirty in the first place. In all my life experience and reading up until that point, I hadn’t realized that it was possible to feel this way. I’d read about falling in love and, in all honesty, scoffed at the Shakespearean drama of it all. But I had fallen in love. Hopelessly. Irretrievably. Inescapably.

Now, two years after that three-year period of my life, I realize that once you truly fall in love, you don’t ever really have a moment where you fall out. You can leave, you can dwell on all the awful reasons that made you leave, you can even dislike the person in question very much…but you won’t ever stop loving them. They snuck in when you weren’t looking and took up permanent residence in your psyche. As you begin to forget them, and even as their piece of property in your mind shrinks around them, they are busy searching for a smaller, less visible patch of mind to occupy, until one day you resignedly allow them a small lot in the back acre of a forgotten farm. When you share certain parts of life with another person, when you go through serious loss together, struggle financially, attempt to buoy each other up when life is wearing you down, when you eat at least two meals a day together every day for years – a bond is created that shall always remain. Your life is changed forever, all just by caring for one other person in life. It’s remarkable, really. How we ever take entering into marriage lightly is beyond me…but then, I’m speaking from a place of experience and perspective.

It is such a profoundly strange thing to end a long-term relationship with someone, despite the frequency of its occurrence. It is one of those things that happens every day, so we become immune to its power. Like the sun rising, or just the mere fact that we are alive, thinking and breathing in and out. In a rare, non-hectic moment at work, I was struck by how odd it felt to have little pieces of my heart left behind in various places and how remarkable it is that I, myself, most likely hold a few pieces that belong to others.

We unload untold amounts of ourselves into a relationship. Sharing silly thoughts and random, private stories in those quiet moments before falling asleep, or the softness of that sweet morning light. When the beginning part calms and you begin to take it for granted that the other person will be interested in your little, daily stories; the real sharing takes play.You find out how your partner deals with commonplace things, like work stress and family events. They learn your unique little habits; like how you always tap your left foot when you think about bills, how you lean your forehead against the window when you’re sad, or how you absentmindedly play with a tiny strand of your hair when lost in a serious daydreaming session. You reveal things about yourself you never wanted to or never even thought to share with your friends. All the while, like it or not, the two of you become ever closer.

You begin to promise each other things. On one of those evenings (those evenings when the sun has just gone down and you’ve both crawled into bed after a long, busy day) when you’re both grateful for the stillness, you draw close together for a lazy hug. One of you whispers, “Promise I’ll never go to sleep by myself again.” A whisper comes back, low and gentle with meaning, “Never. I promise.” Or it’s an outing with friends you attend and it’s with another couple that argues loudly and endlessly. They are obviously nearing some kind of ending. You look at each other and squeeze hands simultaneously, eyes full of promises to never be like that. You talk and laugh about it later, high on your current success, and gleefully dreaming of a bright future in love, you play-fight all the way up the stairs to your newest apartment.

Later, out of sheer boredom, you find yourselves doing things you never thought of before. Like lying on your front lawn, pointing out satellites or falling stars. Talking all night long until neither of you know who fell asleep first. Harmonizing lazily together while he learns a Bob Dylan tune on the classical guitar you bought last year. Walking idly around the nearest library. Playing Try-To-Guess-The-Number-I’m-Thinking game. Seriously. You get bored!

And one day, it’s all over.

Simple. Fast. Final. Like the door to your childhood home slamming in your face, you are never ready for it and the ache will always linger in some form or fashion. Even with copious warning signs; the incessant fighting, not touching while you sleep, no longer maintaining eye contact, and eating dinner in oppressive and total silence – nothing prepares you for that severed cord. It’s grief, it’s loss. The severity of the loss is directly related to the amount of yourself you ended up sharing. And while the pain and hurt fade and even disappear with the relentless but welcome erosion of time, that piece of you will always be gone.

It’s fascinating and unbelievable to me how this process happens. Even more so, how it happens over and over again. To tear off that piece time and again creates a new worry. What will be left of you when it’s all said and done?

I have a girlfriend (a sweet, energetic, and wonderful girl) who refuses to have an ex-boyfriend disappear. She, being the wonderful person I just described, places the utmost importance on not burning a single bridge. I don’t know how she does it. I’m most certainly not friends with even one of my exes! But she, even in her young age, has made this a huge focus in her life for the very reasons I’m discussing. The idea of losing people she’s given any part of her heart to makes her sick. And I think we all know why.

I really don’t have a succinct bubble to wrap this particular meandering up in. Like the subject at hand, I’m left and leaving you with more questions then answers. Sometimes, things are just the way they are. And even when you look at these endings as a valuable learning experience, you are still left standing there, hands open and awkwardly full of these various emotions, asking plaintively,

“Hey, I get it, but seriously, what do I do with these??”

In my experience, absolutely nothing but time can answer that question. Time and a lot of pondering.

Like I said earlier, profoundly odd.

“Access to your true essence will also give you insight into the mirror of relationship, because all relationship is a reflection of your relationship with yourself.”  – Deepak Chopra