The Little Girl

There is something magical about a little girl.

Her smile.

Her fear.

Her dreams.

Her stories.

I never want to let go of that little girl.

Sometimes she stares deep into my soul, my heart beating out of control as the sound of her silence overwhelms me.

Her stare becomes heavy, like rocks buried in your sweatshirt as you carry them home to brag on your new discoveries. With every year I gain, the fear of losing the little girl within me increases. My knuckles become white as snow as I stand weak in the knees, in fist-clenched denial.

Growing up is hard.

Scary.

Depressing.

Embarrasing.

I miss the simple life of the little girl, whose imagination is from an outside world with animals that talk and humans that fly.

No makeup.

No deadlines.

No meetings to attend except tea parties and fancy balls at the castle.

Relationships are easy for the little girl- no secret conditions or hidden agendas. Simply best friends who you can trust or enemies never worth a second glance.

I used to make my own jewelry and write my own songs.

I used to play pretend like it was required and never be ashamed of my dreams.

Growing up is boring, time-consuming.

Like a sneeze, it attacks you and you can never seem to stop it from coming. It consumes your body. It stops you in your footsteps, until all you can do is close your eyes and wait for it to pass.

Yet the little girl is a stranger to the concept of time. 

The sun and the moon are her clock, moving across the sky like a dance.

Ocean Blue

I attended a conference for work.
There was a poetry session.
I couldn't resist....

I am the sound of raindrops against the tin roof of an old, forgotten cabin along the outskirts of town. Sometimes my chatter is soothing, relaxing the mind of my listeners. Sometimes my passion and overactive brain gives way to my sound as each word, each raindrop of my vocal cords, introduces a storm approaching over the mountains of life.

I am the season of summer, barefoot and wandering along the trails with their deep chocolate brown soil that finds its hideaway underneath my nails, in between hair strands, along my cheeks.

I am the aroma of grass glittering in the sunlight. Bent over from human footsteps, wild and free.

I am a seagull soaring high in the clouds, floating with the wind, each drop, each lift, letting the sky carry me and choreograph my every move as I watch all movement below.

I am an ocean blue, the calm of my sanity.

I am the subject psychology simply because I ask a lot of questions. Questions are my preferred language, my avenue to humanity, the skin of the earth.

The Real Deal.

Sometimes I can be so confident. A good day and I feel like I created it… like I strategically laid brick upon brick and poured my own sweat and labor into the making of its entirety.

My imaginary sweat drips off my forehead, my eyelashes, above my upper lip.

Tickling my entire face.

Sparkling all of my features like gold.

Every second of praise so well deserved. Every honor, every accolade worn like a necklace and momentarily frozen in time to remember forever, adding it to my “Fine Gallery of Achievements”.

My pride is like a boulder creeping in, silently slipping through the back door after curfew.

It destroys me.

This mindset is so addicting. I stand like a prisoner inside of myself, toiling away at life’s finest details, all for a second of attention, a second of fame. When suddenly, my self-imposed castle is nothing but a mere replica of a pile of sand whispered away by the magnitude of the tide.

What builds real castles is Hope. Love. Truth.

May I never lose sight of such things.

Let the Water Fall

This weekend I went camping with strangers.

Strangers that soon became friends.

We were an odd bunch, really.

All from different walks of life with different stories, different opinions.

Different Attachments, Detachments.

Accents, Travel Experiences.

Reasons for moving to Nashville.

Reasons for coming on the trip.

Some were simply bored and needed an easy getaway. Some do this nearly every weekend. Others told stories of their recent ex: husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends. And they just needed some fresh company. Fresh stories. Fresh faces.

But we all had some sort of deep appreciation for nature- being in it, a part of it, walking under it, through it. We spent our weekend treading on tree roots, our pulse pressing into theirs. Talking about bears but thankfully not seeing any. Talking about spiders and seeing plenty.

We jumped across the creek on rocks bigger than our beds at home, all in hopes of standing underneath a considerably enormous and unruly waterfall. Many of us did and we spent every second laughing like children. Eyes wide and mouths open, as the mist fell on our hair and clothes like pebbles. 

Sometimes that’s what life is to me- just hiking to the waterfall. Hiking to that unbearable source of life, that wild taste of tangible beauty, where we simply let the sound of the falls become the beat of our heart. Her mist becomes our breath. And her playful spirit gains every ounce of our attention.

And all we can do is let our gaze exceed our thoughts as we throw our heads and arms up to this incredible source of wonder.

And somehow we feel protected, loved, cared for. Somehow we feel more like ourselves than we have ever known. Our real, exposed, naked selves.

How I wish to spend my days under the waterfall.

The Divine Creep

Sometimes my emotions seem to take over my day.

Own my day.

Choke my day.

Collapse wholeheartedly into every passing Hour.

Minute.

Breath.

Blink.

Before I even know what’s hitting me, they sneak up from behind, boldly strutting over my shoulder like a shadow-less spider creeping in. Light-footed and fast. Intricate and detailed. Terrifying yet oddly appealing, requiring more than just a glance.

I shyly surrender to these odd creatures, completely ignorant to their direction, their timing. I am blindly and eagerly led into the deep wilderness of Despair, Loneliness, Extreme and Utter Joy, not knowing what to do with any of them.

Like a rock to the windshield, I am caught breathless as my first few mindful layers are in fist-clenched denial.

Until.

Until the split forms.

The ice breaks.

Like an abrasive, uncompromising gash on my glass heart, my weak spots are revealed. And yes, some see it as that. Weakness. But I choose not to. I refuse, even.

One, because that’s just where I’m at.

Or maybe who I am.

And two, because my emotions have the divine capability to awaken me to what’s real. What’s eternal.

Through the revelation of these domestic beings, layers of my internal scabs are gently, sometimes ruthlessly ripped away as I see new colors and feel new textures of myself.

And that, to me, is worth it.

A Green Meadow

Sometimes I feel like the ground beneath me is moving. Just hurtling by, plunging forward in utter abandon, at an accelerated speed I have never known. And I am screeching at the heels, trembling in terror, every living cell in me refusing to move with it. My skull plummets to the back of my head, fingers become numb. Mouth dry, eyes soaked, head dizzy.

And I am lost. 

Lost in my own skin. 

Lost in my own breath. 

Lost in everything I once knew to Be. 

To Exist. 

To Thrive.

Yet here I stand swirling around in invisible chaos. Striving to know what’s real and what’s not. What's tangible or illusional. What's relevant or a waste of my time. Which emotions do I believe, depend on? Which ones do I choose to ignore and turn my back on the wind of frailty? So desperately I wish that life was as simple as coloring Barbie on my front porch, just dreaming of a meadow.

A green meadow. 

With so much space. 

So much life. 

No clutter. 

No fears. 

Just a meadow.

How I long for my mind and my heart to be like that meadow where nothing can interrupt its peace. Nothing can disturb its tranquility.

Longing for the meadow today.

Little Elf Friend

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a little elf friend follow you around all day?? A quarter your height, glued to your heels, more loyal than a dog?

I know, creepy right?

Hopefully I haven’t offended any elves out there. (I may have just accidentally started a major outbreak of battle and protest in the North Pole… whoopsy). I guess what I’m getting at is, I just wonder sometimes what it would be like to have someone (anyone) whose sole purpose in life was to follow me and cling to my side beyond debate. They would, almost effortlessly, come to know my habits, my daily routine, my robotic tendencies, just when I thought no one was watching.

Again, I know my imagination can be odd at times, but I have to ask… What would my little elf friend say about me? About all the countless odd quirks and abnormalities I try so desperately to hide in crowds of people?

Just act normal, act normal, I tell myself in fear.

Don’t expose the real you, it could scare them away.

It’s funny, really. Sometimes I feel like I know myself so freaking well, that I am my own little elf friend, able to pull back at any moment and look down at myself in third person with nothing but ease. There I place myself in the perfect position, the perfect stance, like I am on some relentless mission reporting back to a boss with earplugs, ready to make lots and lots of money by my bold predictions. On the other end of the line, my boss listens intently with his combed-back hair and good-for-nothing stamina, holding with ever-increasing force, my very job on the line. And I try, so very desperately, I might add, to predict my next move… Ohh.. I know this one, this is when I start crying. Or, This is when I dive head first into my imagination with all desire to escape reality… Just wait, watch. Mark my words, boss. And within seconds, I become the overzealous, overconfident commentator at Alabama football games who

Never

Stops

Talking.

I mean, whatever happened to living for that element of surprise? That moment of unexpected chaos where we actually stand still in our tracks and respond to… well… ourselves? That moment that our “gut reaction” suddenly becomes real and is completely and utterly, in all forms of the word, unpredictable.

I mean, we are human, right?! Not machines ready to be managed and controlled beyond reason. Our very existence on this grand earth is miraculous and leads to something, Someone, rather, that is simply beyond words, beyond description. We, the created, have hearts and feelings, minds and spirits, that are not meant to be recorded, memorized, or saved away in some document deep within ourselves so that we know what to do next time a similar situation occurs.

Let’s be honest.

I know that sometimes… maybe a lot of times… I can certainly pride myself in just that: knowing myself. You might even hear me boast from time to time that during my year away in Wine Country, Middle-of-the-Forest, Solitude-on-Steroids, California, that there, I truly “found” myself. I am beginning to wonder, however, if there really is such a thing as that…? Perhaps we…or to be more specific, I… can use that phrase as a safety net, to make myself appear more manageable, easily accessible, more I don’t know… understood?

But do we ever truly arrive at that place? “Finding ourselves”? What if, perhaps, we are worth more than that? I mean, it’s no secret: I believe that we as humans are designed so intricately, so brilliantly, that to boast in something as foolish as “finding yourself” is mere nonsense.

Perhaps instead, there are layers beyond layers of “self” in us that change with every season, every new relationship, every up and down of your (and my) life. And that doesn’t mean that we necessarily lose hold of what was there either. That doesn’t mean that we failed in any way whatsoever. No, when these new layers of “self” appear inside of us, we must see it as a new awakening to a piece of the inner soul never yet discovered. And that truly is a beautiful thing. A gift meant to be cherished, explored, even. It’s kind of like meeting ourselves all over again in a way. 

So. Here we arrive. 

Today I choose to embrace the newness of self, of my self. I choose not to run away and hide when I see myself act outside of my typical “boundaries” or expectations, but to see it as raw beauty acting out, stripping away from all chains of pretend.

Self.

What a glorious thing.