Hope

First - I'm waaaay behind on reading all of your blogs, and for that I apologize. Doesn't mean I'll get around to catching up, but that I'm just jumping in where I am. Life's short. I love you all very much, but you're all so prolific! I've tried to keep up with at least my bovine babies, but even they are elusive at the moment. Seems they've left Asthma Girl's and are headed through Utah to New York City (git a rope). Looks like they had a fantastic time with AG and the Brute Squad, though. Thanks AG!!!

Warning - I ramble. I'm disconnected and may not make much sense. What else is new? Where did I leave off? Oh yeah. Spiraling downward. Was I really? A friend and I just had a conversation about spiraling in life (hi Nipper!). The theory is that our lives are not circular. I like to think that I'm less like an onion and more like an artichoke. Prickly and tough on the outside, needing a hot steam bath to open me up, a little flavor on the outside (if there's plenty of melted butter!), but the inside is worth getting to. Mmm! Now I want to go buy artichokes.

So I go through this period of what feels amazingly like teenage angst periodically. Like a kid who kicks and digs in the heels and refuses to eat her vegetables. Or go to bed. Or clean her house. Or step away from her computer long enough to remember that there are real live breathing individuals in the same room, waiting for the attention she's giving the little screen and keyboard. I go through it and feel like I've been here before, and why didn't I kick it's butt, Sea Bass? (Anyone know what the heck that means?!) It sure feels like a circle every time I get here.

But it's not. It's Hope calling me and my not responding. Oh, I hear it alright. It cries out, "There's more than this. You're made for more than this. Reality bites, sure. It always will. But you're letting life pass you by because it hurts. Because of the losses and the pain. Because you're not who and where you thought you'd be. Because you're afraid of who you CAN be. Who you want to be. Who you don't think you can be. Get off your sorry butt. Just be already. Live already. Feel the pain. Feel the loss. Stop burying yourself in your computer. Stop pretending you're no one and nothing. Live."

I stop my ears. I tell Hope to go away. That I'm far less a person than it thinks. That it's wrong about me - all wrong. I have lots of proof to back this up. Lots. Tons. And Hope stands at the door and waits, and knocks, and sings to me (it has a horrible voice, meaning it's difficult to ignore), telling me that my heart can't be as hard as all that. That I'm lovely. That the adventure I crave is right in front of me. Now GET OFF MY ASS AND GO AFTER IT.

I hate Hope when it does that. Hope shouldn't use that kind of language, first off. Shame. But it gets my attention. Eventually. It usually takes a third party to really get my attention. Someone who really loves me. And this time, like many others before, Hope used my Hunny. There was a showdown at the OK Corral, and it wasn't pretty. But it WAS good. I've been hiding, people. Hiding from me. And everyone else.

Like I said, I believe life is a spiral, and I've been in this place before. Many times. It's like childbirth - I forget the pain and find myself here again and again. But, like a spiral, I'm another layer in when I get to this place. I've stopped asking, "Wasn't I just here? How did I get myself into this again? Why didn't I learn?" I think that I'm in a different place, a little deeper, but dealing with my particular weaknesses, that they'll never completely go away. The weakness shapes me. I don't like the me that it makes. At the same time, I love that it allows for people close to me to step up and be involved in the reshaping.

I love being involved in people's lives. I think we all like to make a difference to others. But how hard is it to let others shape us, to make that difference? It's brutal for me. I want to be self-sufficient, always giving, never taking. Make that THOROUGHLY DRAINED, 'cuz that's what happens when you give without allowing others to give to you. Why do we get trapped thinking that's good and necessary? It's wrong. WRONG. But it's still REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to let other people pour into me.

I've been reading through the book of Galatians in the Message nearly every day, as well as slowly making my way back though a book called The Allure of Hope. I find that I'm excited about life again. I find that, yes, I'm really screwed up. I find that the things I really long for and long to be? Won't ever really be all I want here on planet earth. But that it shouldn't stop me from being who I am. That the knowledge that life is not a bed of roses has me cowering in fear rather than conquering giants. Time to get up and go.

I'm sorry to ramble so on my first real day back to the blog. Don't know that I can express myself any better than this yet. Still working through stuff, y'know? But glad to be working on it instead of sitting on it. :) Thanks for sticking with me, friends.

Until I write again ...

Flea