pinprick

Coffee is a stealth-soother and I like it that way. It’s hot and relaxing and settles over all the organs like a warm, fuzzy blanket, but really it’s a tonic for fatigue, my ever-constant companion.

You know, I think I’m just confused: my limbs are incredibly tired and I’m unused to it. All this physical day-to-day stress of my job is out of the ordinary for me. I’m used to mental/emotional stress, the fatigue that comes from overthinking, so I’m not really used to this physical kind, it wears me out and even if I’m soft-sleepy enough for Dustin to kiss my forehead, it’s not the way I want to be.

Christmas shopping, check. Get a new job, check. Emotionally shut-down from mom’s constant physical pain and all the familial stress in general, check. Smile at Dustin more, check. Is my life a checklist?

I prefer to think it isn’t. It’s all a tiny stream of stepping stones, and sometimes it’s a little like a game of Twister, all mangled limbs but without the sex appeal. I don’t know; I’m bad at metaphors.

This morning was a sharp slap in the face. Not just the icy 30 degree wind. It was the NOSTALGIA related to the 30 degree weather. All the crystal brightness of dusty snow, the way the chill wraps around the back of my neck and stings my cheeks rosy, the painful inhalation of ice weather, the blinding sun on the salty white pavement. Too real. Everything from last winter is too real.
I nearly stopped in my tracks at the feel of the winter morning, because it was so heartwrenching. Difficult to breathe. Hit in the mouth by thousands of tiny little pinprick memories, as delicate and insubstantial as they are, they pack a powerful punch. I didn’t want to be punched. But I had to keep moving; we needed to get to the Fairgrounds and there is no time in my life anymore for over-stressing, tearful remembering, diligent overanalyzing, of the past.

What I remember about winter isn’t even the bipolarity and poetry that marked it.
It is the steady current of sadness that interwove everything. Sadness because I was incomplete. Sadness because I had built so much to destroy. Sadness because of the strength I didn’t have.

Well I do have it now, so I wiped the glare of the sun out of my eyes, and with it, the heart-stirrings.
I refuse to feel self-pity for something I can’t change. Moreover, something that was so tragically beautiful that it transformed who I am as a person, what I value, where I find my own value.
And so a tiny smile reached my lips.

I may not have it all figured out and I may not have much time for the kind of poetry made from life-steps, the delicacy of newborn feelings, the minor explosions of thought patterns. But I am learning and I will learn to do it better.

I am just positively silly today.

love