Rev it up

Ok.  I've got an adventure on the boil, and it has a lot of co-conspirators.  It's not flashy or intercontinental, but I'm going to get in the car and drive, all by my lonesome, to a friend's wedding.  I'm leaving a full week before the wedding, and I plan to meander.  Stroll, if you will.  I've got a couple of points to hit, and each one has a friend in the center of them, and I am glad.

I need it.  I just need a change of scene.  I got a taste of it last week with a family vacation, which was great.

But now, now I'm going to saddle up and ride out alone.  I suppose I might head off and get tired of all the solo driving I've left myself to do, but mostly I'm looking forward to singing too loudly with the radio and daydreaming about everything I want next.

Things are not turning out the way I'd like right now, but what's funny is I don't mind.  I'm surprised that I don't mind - I find it shocking, in fact, but I don't.  I think it's going to work out in the end.  This just isn't the end.

Also, this post is a terrible example, but I'm looking forward to listening.  To strangers, to friends, to the radio.  Driving home, I'm bound to see things and people that surprise and delight me. I'll try to write about some of it, to prove that I notice things outside of myself.

And there's something else I'm hoping to get back to.

One time I drove 13 hours home from a friend's wedding and I ended up crying the whole way home.  I know that sounds as if I'm exaggerating, so I'll clarify and say that yes, I would stop for minutes at a time.  But I'd always start again.

What was that about?  Well, I'd met someone I really really liked, in a different way than anyone else, and I had very specific hopes about what would happen, although the facts of the case were not bearing me out.  (This was at least eight years ago - maybe longer.  I just know I hadn't met my husband yet.)  Anyway, I was trying to describe my hopeless infatuation to a friend's husband at the wedding, and he just gave me a look that said, "You poor, deluded fool..."  In that look, I realized, even if he didn't know what he was talking about, he happened to be right.  I was completely kidding myself.  It. was. over.  It had, in fact, never begun.  It was like that moment when you finally understand that the deed you're holing in your hand that you feel so proud of did not actually purchase you the Golden Gate Bridge.

Oddly enough, I wasn't crying about him for 13 hours.  I started crying because I twisted my ankle, and I couldn't stop, and I thought, hang on, I can't possibly be this upset over an ankle, hang on, that guy's not this upsetting either what the hell is up with me??

Maybe you've never done this, but sometimes I'm upset and I can't quite find the true origin of it - not the catalyst, that's not the same, that's just a starting point, I can't always find the ROOT.  So I say sentences out loud to myself, and I see what resonates.  Which set of words rumbles through my brain and matches the serration in my heart?  That day in the car, ankle throbbing, I started testing phrases.  I waded through all the little stuff before I started to get brave and lead with the gut.  I started with things like, "I don't like that he doesn't care about me..." which got me nowhere, so it wasn't about anyone.  It must be more personal.

Paydirt a few minutes later.  "My greatest fear is no one will ever love me."  Instantaneous waterworks.

Yep.  That'll keep a girl in tears for 13 hours.  Yes, every time I got calmed down, I said it again to myself and discovered it still had power.

The happy ending?  I'm not afraid of that anymore.  I found it, articulated it, and eventually, found a way to put it to rest.  I can say that aloud to myself now, and it can't hurt me, because I know that it is bullshit.

So, in the weirdest of ways, I'm looking forward to the moment where I whisper something aloud to myself and finally know what the hell my problem is.  If it makes me cry, so be it.  Maybe this one will make me laugh instead.  Or worry.  Or stew.  Doesn't matter, I look forward to saying that magic sentence out loud and finally understanding something new about myself.

Because when I figure it out...then it's just a matter of time before I annihilate that motherfucker.

Elsbeth and the Road: the Epic Adventure.  Coming to a town near you.

Glum

We've got poinsettias in our window.  Our landlord brought them home from a Christmas party in December and drunkenly handed them off to us on the stairs, clearly glad to be rid of them.  Of course by now the red leaves are very nearly gone - just five remain on one plant, none on the other.  But both have out out a significant collection of green leaves.

Do you know how poinsettias get to be red?  It's to do with being shut away in the dark.  Poinsettias require at least 12 hours of darkness 5 days in a row to turn their leaves red - but lots of sunlight in the remaining 12 hours to make the color vibrant.

I don't know why I have to attach an emotion to a biological reality, but the idea of forcing poinsettias to turn red seems sad to me.  My aunt and uncle ran a greenhouse for years, and of course poinsettias were big business.  At some point all of them had to be forced into red growth by shutting them away in the dark for appropriate lengths of time.

Why should this feel sad?  I don't know.  But I look at the green growth and wonder, would I shut these plants away on a time schedule just to make them red again?

Yes, I know.  Not everything is a metaphor.  It just feels that way sometimes.