Undone

I have always been an attention whore. I admit this freely. I am entirely too vain. If there is a mirror in my presence, I absolutely MUST look into it. Attention is usually great because usually it's safe. Not always but usually.

I am a ridiculously confident person. For an introvert, I find that I rarely have bouts of self doubt when entering the public scene, as long as I don't actually have to interact with someone. I can strut the street in my heels and feel just dandy. I don't care about the cat calls, the stares, the little whispered comments. I am hot. I know it.

However, I haven't always been this way. I have always looked into mirrors when they were around, but there was a time when I did not feel confident walking down the street. I tried to, but I didn't actually. I put up my "I'm so pretty and brave" front, but inside I would cave at the slightest whistle from a passing stranger. I can remember so many times from years 13 to 16 how the confrontations and suggestions from men of all ages would cause my heart to crash into my ribs, my feet to pick up and literally run away, and eventually, the sobs that would rack my entire body. I hated being made to feel cheap. I hated being pursued inappropriately. I only wanted a cute boy to think I was cute.... well actually, I only wanted Adam to think I was cute.

Over the years, I gained confidence. Mostly, I think I got good and angry and this eventually spawned into apathy and then into compassion. I stopped caring how men reacted to their first impression of me. I brushed it off and went on my merry little way because, let's face it, I don't know them, and they will most likely never see me again. I can say no, and I can move on.

However, instances do arise that tear away my entire outer shell of safety. They strip me down and make me feel absolutely vulnerable to the male species. They cause me to revert to my 14 year old self, crying on my brother's shoulder because I just cannot understand why men won't leave me alone... why they won't just treat me like the lady I was raised to be.

A few months back I was asked out by some random receptionist at my dad's doctor's office. I said no, of course, because I had just found out that my father had cancer, and that is just wildly inappropriate. You just don't ask people out when they just find out their father has cancer. That's gross. I did not give him my number or any way to contact me. He gave me his number, but of course I never used it, because I don't call jerks that ask me out on the day I find out my father has cancer.

Now, four months later, he has begun to text me. This means that he took my contact information out of my father's patient file. I feel absolutely violated. The doctor should be a safe place. A place to be healed, not hurt. I feel belittled, stripped of my confidence, and honestly, just a little scared. I am undone.

So I will go downtown tomorrow and I will file an anti-harassment order, which basically says that he cannot contact me ever again.

Tomorrow I will also file a complaint against the clinic, because one of their employees violated my HIPAA rights.

I can use the law to make me strong again. Until then I am relying on my friends to keep me safe.

Rough voices and painted toes

I am loving keeping things just for me, oh but I cannot tell you how hard it is sometimes. Sometimes I am just bursting to share some of what I am finding inside of myself when I keep a few of my thoughts and experiences just for me. There is a whole change that happens when you let your world settle inside of your soul. It's bizarre really because this experience is what I think I have been seeking so long in my deep and possessive introspection. I wanted to find those spaces in me where I sat with myself. It is much easier to do that when you keep yourself inside of you until you getting around to sitting with you (convolution is where I make the most sense, I promise).

There are a few things that have been very soulful for me as of late and these I can generously share.

My favorite movies of all time are three, The Family Stone, Lost in Translation, and Love Song for Bobby Long. Lately, I've been dwelling on the last of these three. Maybe because it feels the most like summer to me, or maybe because it is about the invisible people like my father. As I dug into finding more out about the movie (I always do my research on things I love), I found a new favorite musician, Grayson Capps. Because I found him, I also found that he is the son of the man who wrote the novel that inspired the movie. I am now reading the novel, Off Magazine Street. Everyone says the book is better than the movie. In this case, I don't know that better can be ascribed, but just as lovely and completely enchanting is more apt. Digging into the souls of the forgotten is like working at an archeological site. You find treasures in the dirt that have sat untouched and unspoken of for much too long.

The music, the book, the movie have all rested well with me. I find that much of my own soul sits untouched and unspoken of because I throw it out there in people's faces as soon as I find it. I commercialize it and place it on my sleeve, my own personal billboard, so the world may read and know exactly what is there inside of me. The problem is that no one really reads billboards anymore. They are not an effective form of communication. Soon the billboard is covered in another man's graffiti and my message is no longer visible for what it is. My soul's stories become warped and skewed before I even have a chance to read them. Not to mention the fact that those who do read them are often frightened by the original and unprocessed propaganda I am placing up on my sign. All in all, sharing everything was, it turns out, a terribly unhealthy process.

I heard this weekend a saying: "Look closely at the present you are constructing; it should look like the future you are dreaming."Apparently given to us by Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple, I initially hated this little cliche. However, when I sat down with myself, I realized that the future I dream is this: An old woman with browned, but not dark skin, wrinkled more than slightly, and a full head of curly and wild grey hair, sitting down with her pen to write her final story. There is no fear of her life in her. There is no regret over the sins of her past or her present. There is a small smile that plays around her lips and eyes because she knows what no one else does - herself. She speaks with a rough voice and a deep resonance and her laugh comes quickly but not frantically. She is content to observe; to be observed is of no consequence. She wears her age like she wore her vitality in youth, obscuring her image somehow so that the world still sees the beauty she sees in herself. Her toes are immaculately painted.

I asked myself if I could become that dream. I answered yes. I can...

"A little girl was early told, that life was time, and time was gold. She took a little every day, 'til it went away, and she was old. And she cried cause her gold was gone, and she cried cause she was all alone. And I'm hunting with a lonely heart, crying nevermore shall we part.... " - Grayson Capps.

Pockets

I've found a reserve of pockets behind my heart. I think most people must know they are there in them as well. These are the pockets in which people hide their secrets. I don't keep secrets, and so I've never had a need for pockets. I share all I have with the world around me, as though my pockets have holes in them and all my pebbles fall out, no matter which pocket I put them in.

But I've found the pockets without holes. They lie behind my heart and hide there. They are protected by the thickness of my soul and shielded by the passion of my heart. But they are empty. I've found that I can tuck stories into them and keep them there safely. I can protect them, hide them, from the world, and from myself. I can pull them out, like well loved photos, examine them, and put them back. No one else need know they are there. They are just for me.

I think my life's journey thus far has been without the need for pockets, and in that way I have written a story on the world. I cherish that innocence, that naivety, that passion. But now, this my 26th year, has brought on a joy for pockets and what I can keep in them. So that in another 26 years, I can pull out the tucked away photos and gems kept in my secret pockets, and write a bigger story. One not yet shared, but waiting close to my heart, to get close to yours.

My love...

My love isn't enough for any man. That is the fabulous truth of it all. I love myself too well to have enough love left over to fill a man.

I have a love affair with this world and that is my great tragedy. One man could never be to me what this world is. The insane idea that there should be a love that could be as broad and as flawed as this love I have for the world is lost on me. Only that I would find company to keep as I woo the world and am wooed by her. For the weight of this love I have for the world is too much for me to bear alone, and should I ever succeed at bearing as much of it as I want to, I will need an extra pair of shoulders on which to keep it.

I am worried about. The lovers that pass me by wonder if I will ever love truly. They sing their songs to me and fret for my soul as I leave love behind once again. But I have found that the only love that could entice me to stay with him forever is either that man that could unfathomably entice me to love him more than I love myself, something I can't conceptualize, or that man that could love this world as I do, and join with me in loving... a mutual desire to love each other enough, but not entirely, because we seek to take the world into our grasp, and that requires a reserve of love that is not spent on an individual, not even on ourselves.

"And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world." - Robert Frost

I'm 26. Dude. That really freaks me out

The nieceling....

The Neph...

Nieceling again...

I am 26. I have been 26 for a few days now. I am really weirded out by that. I can't tell you how much different I thought my life would be. I can't tell you how happy I am that it is exactly how it is (give or take 10 lbs). OH but OH, I don't like this feeling quite yet.

My GI Joe comes home in 3 weeks. 3 weeks until a beautiful black man populates my life. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Work is so much work these days. It's depressing me.

Daddy is still so much work and I don't think he even realizes it. He doesn't get the phone calls, or the emails or the letters. He doesn't fill out the paperwork, or arrange appointments and transportation. He seems to think if he's not doing it, then I'm not doing it.

Obladee Oblada ... life goes on.

La la la la life goes on....

Books, love, humor, and a long weekend

Have I mentioned lately how much I love books? I love Louis L'Amore, Ernest Hemmingway, Evelyn Waugh. Mostly though, I love short stories. They enthrall me because they are not a whole story, but a snapshot in time. They are but a moment that leaves space for me to wonder, to imagine, what life would be like before and after. This is why series books are so difficult for me. Granted, I love Harry Potter, I read the whole Twilight series (because let's face it, as horrible as they are, they are very addicting*), Lord of the Rings, and of course, like every good Christian, all of the CS Lewis Series (Narnia and the Space Trilogy), but I have to say, they always leave me wanting. I hate that feeling at the end of full stories, whether a single book or a series, of not feeling complete. With short stories I expect the incomplete. I expect to absorb that moment, as I would absorb the moments of other people's lives I observe on the bus or my morning jaunt to the office. They are passing but with great effect. I love that about short stories.

In that, I've decided to begin work on a little piece of fiction I like to call "How to get into my pants: 10 ways to make this girl swoon" (Title in process). Now I know that this sounds like a naughty book, however the point is to talk about all of the stories (mainly hilarious, although sometimes poignant) I have slowly collected from my dating escapades in the last 10 years. For example, Chapter 1 is titled "On hotdogs, baseball, and beer." Chapter 2, "On intellect, wit, and charm." Chapter 3, "On Swagger"... and so on, ending of course with Chapter 10, "On Love."

I find myself in a position unique amongst friends who share like backgrounds. Admittedly, I do not know too many girls who have graduated from conservative Bible Colleges, without marrying sometime in the next 2 years. Of the girls I do know, I think I am one of maybe 3? that actually has an active dating life. I say three, because I know there have got to be girls that are in the same position, and I must know some of them, but I don't talk to them. I don't really know them. So this little writing experiment will tell my stories of horrible dates, hilarious dates, the teeth bumping kisses, the awkward goodnights, the bold "no's" to requests to spend the night, the tragic stories of lost love, missed chances, turned down proposals. I'll keep you posted on progress (maybe... I'm notoriously bad a progress reports).

On the topic of love, I am sadly lacking. I am, of course, still dating... but the stories, even the good ones, are starting to seem a bit bland. I think it's because my heart's not in it. I have more important stories to tell. But the stories of death, pain, cancer are all starting to wear on me, hence this lovely post that has nothing to do with any of the aforementioned. So I am going to dedicate some time in my long weekend to chick flicks, girl time, and giddiness. Maybe I'll even dig out a new man to spend a little time on... because sometimes you just need a good date.

Humorously, I find that my life is a bit haphazard. I know that isn't shocking to anyone who knows the ins and outs of my days, but I am beginning to take a humorous approach to my lopsided life. I fail often and now I must just laugh at all of the coming waves of missteps and follies which accessorize my days.

This weekend will be an accessory. I am determined to take time out for fireworks and fun. I have Monday off and will spend a bit of that at a spa with a lovely friend. Then the week of hard work (the big boss is visiting) and birthdays (my own and my sister-in-law's) and of course of Cornucopia days, at which I will be hard at work. So this weekend will be the eye in the storm... I hope.

Here's to life. La' Chaim.... coincidentally, I hope name one of my daughters Chaya.. because life should always be celebrated.

*Note: If you are a parent, I plead with you: Do not allow your daughters under age 16 to read the Twilight books. Not because they are unusually untoward, but rather because they teach false concepts of romantic love and dedication. I also suggest banning Christian Romance Novels, for the same reason.