weathering the storm

When I chose the pictures for this piece, I titled it "storming..." and then I walked away.  Not ready to share exactly what I was going through.  I am not really sure I am yet, either, but this draft remains open on my desktop, taunting me.  Truth be told, I took these pictures as a storm was threatening to move over the mesa.  When I started writing, I was in the eye of the storm.

They say when you are in the eye of the storm there is a calm.  All around you the elements are doing their best to let you know just how small you really are, but right where you stand, there is no motion.  I don't know if that is the best description for how I was feeling.  Surely there was a lot of swirling going on around me, but calm was not something I could grab hold of.  Maybe it wasn't what I wanted either.

There was a part of me that just wanted to hurt, to rage, to cry, to let go.  Let go.  That's what I wanted to do.  I wanted to let go, forget, and stop feeling.  But there was this other part of me that didn't want to see the Berlin wall go up, again, around my heart.  There was this little part, quietly advocating for the feelings, for hope, for hope against hope because that is what it feels like to be vulnerable.

I fucking hate what it feels like to be vulnerable.  I imagine that there are benefits.  I try to list them regularly... it's the utter lack of control, the uncertainty that vulnerability reinforces that I hate.  And, yet, I understand, not just intellectually, that this is real life. 

Someone I knew used to say that limitations are imaginary.  I say control is imaginary.  Whatever plan we imagine we have put into motion is just that ... imagined.  Plans, like life, go in whichever direction the wind moves them. 

Here's what that eye of the storm felt like:  waking up to the thunder/lightning storm right above your apartment.  Rain crashing down, carried through the window by the howling wind, and the walls shaking with each thunderbolt.  The power flashes off briefly and then comes back on ... just to let you know this is not a dream, or a nightmare.  This is life.  Welcome home.

And as soon as it blew in, it blows out again, and you are not allowed to take it personally (even though you are a person -- as Holly Golightly might say, "quelle contradiction").

As a reward for being human and subject to the whims of the universe and victim of so many well laid plans, I am taking myself to the spa today.  I hope you are doing something for yourself today, whether it is taking a walk, a nap, drinking in the heat or the wind or the rain, or planning how you will spend the hurricane heading your way.


Photo credits:  me, fancy camera, on the road, I-40, August 2011