Category Archives: Sentimental

I’m Glad I’m Not a Rock.

Last night I was sort of not in a great mood. And then life did the thing that it does and I ended up in a worse mood. Then I was up all night (life things) and my kid woke me up at 4:30 (time change things) and my mood was, dare I say it, sour.

A few years ago I randomly noticed a tweet from some bloggers I didn’t know which took me to their blog. I didn’t know it at the time, but that tweet was going to change my life.

When I couldn’t sleep, I thought about the Simon & Garfunkel song, I Am a Rock. I loved that song the first time I heard it because the lyrics spoke to me. I’m not a rock or an island, but I wished I could make myself either so many times. The rock feels no pain and an island never cries.

A link on the blog I got to from the tweet led me to yeah write. I’ve gone on and on about this writing challenge and the community I found there. This community welcomed me as a writer when I didn’t know if I really was one, but that isn’t the story. The story is that that one little tweet led me to some of the most amazing people.

The thing about amazing people? They know more amazing people.

Writing might make me seem like the type of person who is outgoing and fearless. I might seem like I want a lot of attention, that I’m comfortable in my skin, that I trust myself. More than anything, writing is a compulsion. I write because I have to and I share my work because I have to. I didn’t expect anything in return from writing. I expected to write in a vacuum forever.

I still wanted to be a rock or an island. But I kept meeting amazing people.

Sometimes life has a funny way of taking you down a path you didn’t know you needed to go down. Sometimes it opens you up to more amazing things, more amazing people. And these people lift you up when you’re down and keep building you up until you can stand up alone and not feel like you need to be a rock or an island.

Sometimes you get to be the light for other people, the arms raising them up because they need the boost. Sometimes you remember that friendship, true friendship, is a reciprocal arrangement to support those you love and who love you back. You remember that you deserve that reciprocity. You are worthy of it. They deserve it too and so you give it freely and without condition just like they do for you.

This morning, I needed to be lifted. I was remembering so well why I’d always wanted to be a rock, an island.

But I have this amazing group of people, a brick wall of support, who saw my hurt and jumped in to raise me back up.

Tonight I’m so glad I’m not a rock.

This is yeah write’s nomo writing challenge Day 5.

Fade Away.

I’ve been struggling to think about people I used to know. I grew up in a small town. I went to a small college. Most of my jobs have been long term. There were people I saw almost every single day and now it’s been so long since I’ve seen them I can barely remember that they used to exist in my world. Facebook became a place to reconnect with old friends and, of course, their lives have gone on just as mine has but I still see them there. Some are further in the background than others, slightly more blurry in my mind’s eye.

There are others I only hear about in passing. Gossip and rumors, hey-did-you-hear-about-this-one sort of stuff that floats around, the things that make old friends talk because it is their common ground. People we used to know – we share that.

And then there are others who just appear to be gone. I’m sure if I asked I could find out their deal. They hate social media or they moved away but their mom is in town or whatever. I’m sure they exist in some space and they are, somewhere, a fixture. Just like they used to be for me. Just like I used to be for them. Maybe.

Time always marches on. Things always change. People will always come and go. It seems like we take for granted that people will always be around simply because they were always around. But then they just aren’t and years go by and suddenly I realize that people have just faded away out of my memory.

People, as much as we may not want to admit it, just become obsolete. There’s some newer person who swoops in, maybe she’s more clever or more hip or more cool but whatever she is she’s just more of it. As much as things change people do, too, and it’s one of those things we can’t stop if we try but we don’t always notice it until it’s too late. And whether it’s that we let someone replace our old people or someone let us get replaced when I stop and think about it, it just leaves this cavernous pit in my stomach because all of us, each and every one of us, is replaceable even if we swear up and down that it’ll be different.

It won’t be different.

And before long, we’re just gone. Maybe we’ll pop into someone’s head someday and maybe someone will ask whatever happened to? or maybe not. Maybe we never pop back up. Maybe we’re completely forgotten.

Maybe we all just fade away.

Sometimes I feel like I’m not a real person, like I’m just a shadowy specter floating in the background until it’s time to fade away.

 

Featured image credit.

It’s Best Not to Wonder.

If I had to guess, I’d say my father was probably fishing on Sunday. He once told me that was what he liked to do with his time. He also used to do projects around the house, like that year he spent digging out a basement underneath the cabin he lived in, but I’m not sure he’s in any shape to do that sort of thing anymore. He turned 65 last month. At that age, I guess anything is possible though. I really wouldn’t know.

While I did my best to keep the focus of Father’s Day on my husband, thoughts of my own father kept creeping into my mind. I pictured him sitting in his rowboat, that one he had shown me all those years ago when we went for a walk along the lake he lived on. I could see him sitting there, the oars perched off the sides in a way that I honestly don’t know is even possible as I know nothing about rowboats. Maybe it wasn’t a rowboat. I’m not sure now. But it was blue. Or white. I actually can’t remember too much about it.

In my mind he was smoking. I wondered if he would pitch the finished butts out into the lake and risk hurting the fish or if he’d stamp them out in an ashtray he’d brought along with him. I pictured the old lunch cooler he used to bring to work, the red one with the flip down white lid. I’ll bet this one didn’t have beer in it though. He’s been sober for over twenty years. Well, last time I talked to him he had been sober. He probably doesn’t have that cooler anymore, anyway.

I wondered if he would head home at a certain time to sit down to a meal with his second wife, the woman he married some time in the last 15 years or so. I’m not sure when that happened. They weren’t married when I met her and then the next time I talked to my father they were. My father’s remarriage was one of those big things that remains a mystery to me, mostly because I wasn’t included in it.

I wondered what he’d think about, sitting there in the boat. What would he talk about later with his wife? Surely he knew it was Father’s Day. Did he wonder where his children were and what they were doing?

And then I wondered what kind of father abandons his children, gives up without a fight, just walks away. Not just once, either, but multiple times, over and over. I want to think he had a good reason, but in all this time he’s never once shared that with me. I want to think that if I were in his position, if I had been given the second and third and fourth chances, I wouldn’t squander them.

But maybe I would. Maybe I couldn’t turn it around either.

Maybe some people aren’t worth fighting for.

Maybe he feels the same way about me.

Edited to add: This post took crowd favorite over at yeah write last week! Thanks to everyone who read, voted, and commented!

Featured image credit

Sometimes I Get Sappy.

Last year I posted one sentence because I waited until the end of the day to post. Today I’m getting it out early so it can be a little something more. I’m going to go with the obligatory theme of thankfulness, what with it being Thanksgiving and all.

I’m thankful that Nathan is finally feeling better (I think) and that he slept all the way to 5:41 this morning. I’m thankful he only woke me up one time during the night (4 a.m.). I can assure you that I will be thankful when he goes to bed.

I am truly, truly thankful for such a wonderful boy whom I love so very much. He has taught me so much. I’m not even going to make a joke about how he’s taught me how to live without sleep, because that would be obvious, and also because this is the part where I proclaim my love for my child without a sarcastic remark.

I’m thankful for my husband – for being by my side for so long, for working so hard for our family, for all of it.

I’m thankful for wonderful friends. I have friends who know what I need, sometimes before I do. I have friends who are like second parents to my kid, which is something I never thought I’d need so much, but, you know, the village. I have friends who let me dump on them daily and they are still there, friends who call just to talk, friends who care about me. I never wanted to need friends, but need them I do, and I’m so thankful to have them.

I’m thankful for a job that makes it easier to keep my family as a priority. It’s not an easy job, it’s not all sunshine and roses, but there’s understanding, and that’s not easy to come by.

I’m thankful for a house full of stuff. Even if I want to get rid of all the stuff and live that minimalist life I keep yammering about, even when that house threatens to fall apart in a new way every other day, I’m so lucky to have what I have and for that, I am thankful.

I’m thankful for the ability to write – the physical ability, the mental ability, the time, and the resources. I don’t know where I’d be without that.

I’m thankful for every single person who reads this blog and for every single comment (OK, not the spam, let’s not go overboard here).

I’m thankful for the writers I know who keep me going, feed my writer-spirit, and who gently say, “Don’t publish that.”

I’m thankful that even when things are crummy, I have hope and dreams and someone to share them with.

I complain often, but I’m thankful. Maybe I don’t say it enough. Maybe all my lamenting makes it seem like I don’t know how lucky I am, but I am lucky and I know it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

This is NaBloPoMo Day 28. You can read more here.

Featured image credit: www.publicdomainpictures.net