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© 2004-2008 Linda Escaip
"I may be grumpy, but I like you."
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The Suns and Moons of the Grumpiest Girl in the Room.
Welcome to my journal, sugarhips.
Almost 25-August-2005 7:32 a.m.
There are times I feel I am standing at the end of my life looking back at everything I could never quite reach. I wanted to touch everything, I really did. All those dreams, every last one, I wanted to feel the smooth surface against my skin, wanted to be pulled inside each blissful, tangible layer until I met the core, like a long-lost friend. I wanted to embrace every pleasing picture in my mind's eye. And I have been close a few times, but either slipped over the edge while trying to reach across the distance, or allowed someone to push me over. What I am wondering is why the hell there was always a cliff involved.
I have prayed so hard at various stages of my life I thought my heart would erupt like a volcano, burn through my ribs and ooze onto the ground. We think at times we can love someone enough to destroy what is killing them. If I love you with every inch of my soul, you will see tomorrow with me. Yet I haven't even mastered how to save myself. Every day I stand at the cliff's edge. Every day I meet the end of my life, and every regret is there waiting, quite possibly as the comic relief.
I have begun to laugh at the things that drive me crazy. Apparently there is a limit to habitual reaction. Anger hits the ceiling a million times and finally you just have to laugh. It's painful to burst through the roof.
Things fall apart. You can be sure of that. Nothing stays the same. God, how that used to frighten me. Back when everything seemed constant and unshakeable, I would fight against that remark. Nothing stays the same. Almost hated the person for uttering such atrocity. But nothing does. And all around you are the pieces, and sometimes they are not worth putting back together, even if you can shape them into something else. Sometimes those pieces are tired and just want to be left to quietly die like everything will eventually.
I am exploring what's in my heart at the moment, and it hurts like hell. Things can't always be pretty and light and deliciously fragrant. Some things just smell like rotting garbage, and look like haggard old drunks after a three-day binge, no sleep, and a couple of serious, skin-tearing brawls. Some things seem heavy and sordid and hopeless. Let them be. Put on your rubber wading boots and trudge through it all. Despair is nothing without hope, and hope nothing without despair.
I used to think I was afraid of the dark. Monsters too. The scariest things are those that reside in our heads and hearts. The feelings and thoughts we run from, those become the monsters, the darkness. But only because we run. My whole life I was sure I faced my fears, felt my feelings. As a child, I felt everything: my feelings and yours. At some point I must have packed all of it into my car and driven it out to the desert. I don't think I left any water or food, because when those feelings showed up years later, they seemed pretty pissed off.
But they don't require nourishment to survive. Strong feelings grow in intensity when avoided, for their sole purpose is to be experienced. They become louder and larger. It's not that they're angry and hunting you down, although it can definitely feel that way; they are on a mission and won't dissipate until you've felt them. It's almost as if they're getting paid generously for the job and won't receive the check until the work is done. They find their way back eventually, walking resolutely against the raging rivers of flash floods, through sandstorms, drought. Whatever you put in their path, they'll step around or over it.
I am turning now to face them, one by one. Sometimes two at a time. No more hiding under covers and couches and cars. Here I am.
It's like the dreams I used to have where I was being chased from room to room by wasps who would hover over me in the creases separating ceilings and walls. I'd run, yet there they would be. Lurking. Waiting. Menacing. I would awake from these dreams with fear in my heart, somewhat relieved to have been dreaming. But for years in waking life I have feared the wasps, thinking I hear them in the vents in the house; in the chimney making their way down; tapping and buzzing against windows, trying to get in through tiny openings. They would build enormous nests attached to the old house and chase me from the garage to the porch, and back again the next time I tried to leave. It seemed they were after me both in and out of sleep.
I killed those wasps in a dream one morning and haven't had a wasp dream since.
The only choice I'm giving myself is to face every feeling I have been avoiding for ages, every fear that has stifled me and wrapped itself around my neck, every blade that I have plunged into my own feet. In five minutes my life with be over. I have spent so much of this time feeling out of control, trying to hold on to something stable. A cliff's edge, usually.
I don't want to feel like I'm just surviving. I didn't come here simply to survive. I came here to feel everything, not just the stuff deemed most desirable. I want to live. I already know what heartache feels like, and know it won't kill me as long as I don't avoid it. I already know that one day I will die. And harder still, I know my parents will die. One night will be the last time I hear my mom's voice sweetly saying goodnight over the phone. And there isn't one goddamned thing I can do about that. Nothing. I don't have the words to explain how much that hurts. But even now, sitting here with tears running down my face and snot running out of my nose, I'm OK. And I feel this immense love for everyone because we all ache. We all know, or will know, the pain that is brought on by the illusive separation of death.
It hurts to feel everything, but at the same time feels good to be open to it all. The whole contains within itself everything, and so you can't truly know pleasure without pain, sadness without happiness, worthlessness without worth, horror without delight, etc. You have to see the entire picture and accept every angle. Otherwise you'll be fighting a battle you will never win because there is no end, and you'll be shadowboxing anyway because life isn't fighting you—it's just moving along the way it goes.
It's true. Nothing here is fighting you except yourself.
Quote From My World
"Why do you suppose God made wasps? They really serve no purpose."
"I don't know. Maybe God really is a boy."
Well, I'm off to claim a couple of buttermilk pancakes. I wish you an open heart and a full voice. Say everything you need to say—don't leave the words in your throat or floating about your heart. Thanks for reading.
Linda
The photo at the top of the page was taken of a beautiful pale green one afternoon. She/he was promptly set free after the photograph was captured.
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