Somewhere deep inside of me are feelings.
I recalled where they were hidden today, but could not quite reach them.
I put them very high up on a shelf some time ago so that I could not feel them.
Someday I hope to be tall enough and strong enough to reach for them again.
But not now, for now, I run.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
A Little Alexplanation.
Welcome to my blog, Alexpedition! (Thank you Paul Hood)
Let me properly introduce my blog and tell you what I expect it to be.
I am going to eventually take a cross country trip. Not at some point in my life but pretty much now or at least soon. I want to have a space to blog about my trip, my experiences, the places and things and maybe even people I see along the way. So, Alexpedition! will be that place. I'll share with you my pictures and perhaps some video too.
When I tell people about my trip the most popular response is, "Why?" and then usually, "Where?" and eventually, "Can I go with you?" which is sometimes followed by "You're so lucky!"
So in the few short months I have left before I do this thing, I will try to examine those questions for myself and for you. I'll also try to share with you the planning that has gone on and is still going on to get this thing off the ground.
In answer to the question WHY? I have simply always wanted to. I am also not sure at this point how to NOT do it. I sometimes think I need to do it. It excites me when I think about it and scares me when I wake up in the middle of the night knowing I am actually planning on doing it.
Besides that, TWO dozen roses had sent me to the therapist's office. There I found waiting for me; depression, empty nest syndrome and ME. And lucky me this time I found a GOOD therapist. No more eating from garbage cans and kicking coke machines. It was time to get this right.
I sat pouting across from this woman who seemed to never talk much above a whisper. I just really wanted to know why everyone had left, where had they gone and had any of them left a forwarding address. She wanted to talk about ME. And I really didn't want to talk about ME. It took me a while to even think about ME. She had no idea how frightened I was to find myself stuck all alone with ME. No one did. Can we just REWIND this thing???...NOPE!!
She told me..."This is finally a time in your life for YOU!"
The thought was in a word: OVERWHELMING. Who wants to spend THAT much time with ME? I certainly didn't.
She asked me..."What exactly were you going to do with yourself BEFORE you had your daughter?"
I was just so happy that she came along and saved ME from having to even THINK about that.
So I thought about it...and for those who have never been, you don't get it in the office...or even on the elevator ride downstairs...they plant it like a seed in your mind.
So...from as early as I can recall I've wanted to be...
1. Safe
2. able to sleep
3. not kissed and hugged when relatives come in the door.
4. I want a pony...I prayed for it every Sunday in church.
...BE...Alex what did you want to BE???
5. a veterinarian (but every kid always wants to be that.)
6. Perfect for sure.
7. not bored
8. clean :)
9. a doctor (no that's what my mother wanted me to be)
Oh YES!!!!! That's it.
10. CHARLES KURALT!!!
Monday, April 9, 2012
Starting Somewhere?
I have to start somewhere and so I begin.
We are in the process of trying to clean out a rather large basement and several storage units. I have been proud to say recently that only a few of the boxes in the basement are mine. It was true. When I moved two years ago I had simplified my life down to very few things. I liked it. If evacuating was something I ever needed to do I would be ready in less than 5 minutes. So when my mother called me from one of the storage units being cleaned out under her supervision I was shocked to hear her say, "I think there are a few boxes in here that are yours." No. It couldn't be. "Are you sure?", I questioned. She answered in the affirmative so I asked her to send them home with her and I would go through the boxes.
When my mother pulled into the garage I was waiting for her. There was no point in bringing this junk into the house. It must be terribly dusty and I had just cleaned the downstairs the day before to accommodate the Easter crowd. I pulled the three boxes out of her trunk and set them down on the floor of the garage. I pride myself in being an efficient cleaner, three boxes, I would be back in the house in a few minutes. I opened the first box and the first thing I saw was Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits. No, not a CD. I'm talking 33 and 1/3, an LP baby!!!
I wondered for a moment WHY it was still following me. Amazing how your things will do that. I bought that thing in KINGS on 29th street in Harrisburg. I rode my bike to the store and purchased it with my paper route money. The poor thing had been following me around for 34 years and I still hadn't managed to lose it. But that was it. That was the sum total of all the things in those boxes that were mine because once I removed that album from the top of the box everything else in those boxes were my daughter's things.
Going through her things it didn't take long at all for me to start to cry. Pictures of course, dance posters, dance programs, cards people had given her from her high school graduation, everything you can imagine with Ariel from the Little Mermaid, books, concert programs, ticket stubs, stuffed animals, costume jewelry, an old video game we had played to the very end together and her first Winnie the Pooh.
I thought briefly of the agony of always having to move forward and never having the option to go backwards, I hate it, but it is just the way this world is and I am trying to get used to the fact that my life doesn't have a rewind button. I heard the therapist say.
I recalled packing those boxes. My daughter went to college in September and by October I was gone. The condition of those boxes today reminds me of the frantic pace at which I packed them 5 years ago. I packed everything up as quick as I could. Stoically I recall. I didn't even take them to my new place. I put those boxes in a storage unit. This was part of the process. In my life at times like that when my brain should be exploding with grief and sorrow my mind grows frighteningly quiet and everything changes to "movie mode". Crouching down on the floor of the bedroom trying to hide as the monster is pounding on the windows to get in, I hear myself say aloud, "this almost seems like I am watching a movie." At my brother's funeral, "you're holding up really well." Why? It feels like a movie. It takes several days, weeks or even years sometimes for all my emotions to come flooding in and then like a child waking up from a nightmare I sit up and scream.
Where is everyone? Why didn't anybody wake me? Hey? WHERE DID EVERYBODY GO??? Don't leave me here all alone...with just ME!! Take me with you! PLEASE!!
We are in the process of trying to clean out a rather large basement and several storage units. I have been proud to say recently that only a few of the boxes in the basement are mine. It was true. When I moved two years ago I had simplified my life down to very few things. I liked it. If evacuating was something I ever needed to do I would be ready in less than 5 minutes. So when my mother called me from one of the storage units being cleaned out under her supervision I was shocked to hear her say, "I think there are a few boxes in here that are yours." No. It couldn't be. "Are you sure?", I questioned. She answered in the affirmative so I asked her to send them home with her and I would go through the boxes.
When my mother pulled into the garage I was waiting for her. There was no point in bringing this junk into the house. It must be terribly dusty and I had just cleaned the downstairs the day before to accommodate the Easter crowd. I pulled the three boxes out of her trunk and set them down on the floor of the garage. I pride myself in being an efficient cleaner, three boxes, I would be back in the house in a few minutes. I opened the first box and the first thing I saw was Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits. No, not a CD. I'm talking 33 and 1/3, an LP baby!!!
I wondered for a moment WHY it was still following me. Amazing how your things will do that. I bought that thing in KINGS on 29th street in Harrisburg. I rode my bike to the store and purchased it with my paper route money. The poor thing had been following me around for 34 years and I still hadn't managed to lose it. But that was it. That was the sum total of all the things in those boxes that were mine because once I removed that album from the top of the box everything else in those boxes were my daughter's things.
Going through her things it didn't take long at all for me to start to cry. Pictures of course, dance posters, dance programs, cards people had given her from her high school graduation, everything you can imagine with Ariel from the Little Mermaid, books, concert programs, ticket stubs, stuffed animals, costume jewelry, an old video game we had played to the very end together and her first Winnie the Pooh.
I thought briefly of the agony of always having to move forward and never having the option to go backwards, I hate it, but it is just the way this world is and I am trying to get used to the fact that my life doesn't have a rewind button. I heard the therapist say.
I recalled packing those boxes. My daughter went to college in September and by October I was gone. The condition of those boxes today reminds me of the frantic pace at which I packed them 5 years ago. I packed everything up as quick as I could. Stoically I recall. I didn't even take them to my new place. I put those boxes in a storage unit. This was part of the process. In my life at times like that when my brain should be exploding with grief and sorrow my mind grows frighteningly quiet and everything changes to "movie mode". Crouching down on the floor of the bedroom trying to hide as the monster is pounding on the windows to get in, I hear myself say aloud, "this almost seems like I am watching a movie." At my brother's funeral, "you're holding up really well." Why? It feels like a movie. It takes several days, weeks or even years sometimes for all my emotions to come flooding in and then like a child waking up from a nightmare I sit up and scream.
Where is everyone? Why didn't anybody wake me? Hey? WHERE DID EVERYBODY GO??? Don't leave me here all alone...with just ME!! Take me with you! PLEASE!!
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