She Goes There: Into The Darkness of Being Human

Do you ever read your life like a book; and find yourself wanting to rush through the middle parts where all the uncertainties lie, and you just can't be sure which way things are going to go? You know that it will get wrapped up somehow, with at least a hint of optimism and hope, and some of the "middle part" questions are going to get answered in one way or another?

Well, I do.
I hate being uncomfortable. Or sad. I want to rush through it.

I get all bogged down in it, and I'd swear that I'm chronically miserable. Hopeless. A gaping, bottomless pit. I find myself wishing I were someone else. Someone happy. With less uncertainty.

I actually looked through a bunch of our very own pictures and found myself thinking; I wanna be her. (it was a fleeting thought, for any of you considering speed-dialing my therapist, or heading to your typewriter and writing a sequel to Sybil) Times like these make me wish I were more normal. Steady; with fewer dips and dumps.

But my friend Rod says; "Forget about normal. There is no normal." (easy for him to say- he's normal.) Rod says that if everyone were statistically normal, that they would all be abnormal.

Anomolies of the normalities.

I'd still like to give it a try. But if experience is the best teacher, then I'd best sit up straighter and pay attention. I'm not "normal" in the "water off a duck's back" sense of the word. Things bother me. Change unsettles me. Sadness descends on me and sleep seduces me. There is no rushing it, as the attempt to rush the unpleasantries simply drive them underground where they branch out like the suckering tendrils of the virginia creeper. (or planters warts, but that doesn't sound as good).

Sometimes its helpful to just head outdoors. Pull a few weeds. Watch the laundry sway on the clothesline. Smell the backyard campfire. Remember that life's not all in the endless spinning and washing of plates and floors and bodies and towels. Remember that the photographs are real, but still life, whereas real life is not static and has no sound effects.

And remember what another wise man once told me. (it was Brian, and it was just a few days ago) He said that maybe I just stink at denial. Maybe living in the real world, getting one's hands and heart dirty, just hurts because there are more exposed areas.

It sounds good.
It feels lousey.

There are moments where my forty year old body is still just a cover for a scared, insecure, naive little farmgirl who just wants everyone to get along and no harsh words or judgements or disapproval or hatred to exist. And no criticism. Please, none of that. Yet, ironically, I am capable of all those things myself and practise them, just as others around me practise them on me.

It's just all together unsettling. But me and this body and this mind are in it for the long haul. We're starting to become friends instead of fighting quite so much with one another. We're starting to recognize that kindness must begin at home, with these cells and these neurons, and these weaker and stronger members. We're pulling together more than we used to, and learning that criticism of each other's parts and pieces is no more helpful within one human body than it is in the entire body of the world's people.

And that feels like a growing pain.