The New Blue

So I'm thinking kayaking today. If the weather holds that is. And I hate to say it, let alone admit it, but as much as I love the whole paddling down a river thing, I still have yet to completely lose my going to tip over and drown fear.

I haven't a clue why it is the whole kayak on top of water sparks in me such fear. I mean, I do know how to swim and I'm not scared of water which pretty much makes my fear irrational or at least not making as much sense as some fears do.

Maybe I was traumatized as a child. Who am I kidding? Did I just say maybe? I WAS traumatized as a child. And I do remember it clearly. I was in a row boat and I couldn't get back to shore, and everyone on Terra firma was finding my situation highly entertaining while I was in tears on the boat. And yes, there is a picture to prove it and I do believe I've already posted it here. (But of course will do so again to make those responsible for it feel bad about making a Kodak moment out of one that has turned out to pour some rain on my whole like to go kayaking parade.)

And I don't have to wonder why life jackets are constantly on my mind, or why I always insist I go out on the water with more than just myself, or why I don't even trust myself (at least not yet) to take KC out alone without a third and more experienced kayaker with me.

I think eventually I'm going to desensitize myself to feeling all this fear, but for the moment it's a stumbling block on my fun parameter that I just need to slowly paddle through.

Gaining Ground

Years ago I packed up my entire life and moved it miles away from home to a house that never once felt like mine, to live with a man who knew only how to be harsh, critical and unkind. I thought that I could live with my mistake and I tried. I really tried. I spent a year trying to be perfect. To do everything right. To keep the house as clean as I could keep it. To keep my mouth shut and not say a word.

Trying so hard to be something I never really wanted to be took its toll. The first few months after I left, I lived as if I were in the witness protection program. Always hiding, always avoiding any place where we might accidentally meet. Always looking over my shoulder, worrying.

My new home became my refuge. I poured my soul out in many colors on the walls. Arranged my furniture in ways that pleased me and made me smile. And ever so slowly, I began to remember what it was like to feel like me. Unburdened.

I like to think that my home and I needed each other. With every coat of paint, with every improvement I made, I released the potential in us both. I would invite people over, and I would say, if you could have seen it before. And I was so proud to come home at the end of the day to a space that always made me feel like it was welcoming me home.

But now I feel the time is coming once again to make a change. To something more permanent, to something that I can truly call my own. And I think I may have found it, or at least I'm hoping that I have. And though there is a sadness to bring anything that has done me well to a close, I know I've gotten what I came here for.

A brand new heart. A brand new chance. A brand new life.

And I am thankful in ways I am still beginning to know.

My Shiny New Office

My shiny new office has a window that opens up to the bright blue outside and I am happy, happy, happy...

It won't last long, but for today, it's enough!

Shedding Some Light

In black and white, statistics are manageable numbers. Easily read, easily forgotten, and easily ignored. It's hard to imagine them as they truly are. A face. A name. Someone real.

The reality is rape is a vicious crime against a person, against a body, against a mind that remembers far longer than any visible scars remain. But we don't talk about it. It makes people uncomfortable. Maybe because they don't know what to say. Maybe because it touches far too close to home. Maybe because no one has ever really told us how to react, how to respond, how to grapple with the complexities of an issue that get confused by the notion that sex and rape are one and the same.

If you ask me, I don't believe the statistics. Given the history of rape and it's propensity to be undocumented and unreported, it seems to me that its tentacles far outreach the numbers given. Maybe they're as close to the truth as we can get without ever being able to know for certain what they really are. But those numbers matter. It reminds us of conversations we need to have with our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, our friends.

Rape affects us all whether we have born witness to its wake, or are among those whose lives miraculously go untouched. We cannot continue to live in a world where it's acceptable to sweep violence against women and children under the rug, away from the public eye. We cannot live in the world where victims of violence bear the weight of shame for a crime they did not commit.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention month. Get the facts, share them with those you know, don't let this discussion stay in the dark. Every conversation counts, every light matters...

Get help. Get information. Support RAINN

The Restorative Value of Down Time

It's early on a Saturday morning, and save for the noise of a random car passing by, all is quiet. This just might be my favorite time of day. When things feel fresh and new and laid back, as if time is somehow moving slower than it does on any other day of the week.

I'm not hurried. Not feeling rushed. Not racing to get out the door at any certain time for any certain endeavor. I am simply in the moment, relaxed and unhurried, refusing to be hassled by the persistence of life intent on keeping its invisible deadline with its rush, rush, rush mentality.

And it's nice to just simply sit here soaking up this silence. To listen to the stillness and rejoice that for the time being all the things that will eventually need to be done, the housework, the shopping, the gym, all of these things can wait a few minutes more.

There is no rush. No reason to do anything but sip my coffee slowly, think my thoughts and take in the morning as if it were mine and mine alone.

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

So I've decided that it's time to be on a mission. Mostly because it's been forever since my last covert operation and quite possibly because the idea of turning forty sometime in the next six years has me scared to death that I'm gonna hit that number still single and alone...

It turns out this tiny little thought has been enough to propel me into action. And since I've already managed to open mouth and insert foot with a question so out of the ballpark that I still can't even believe it came out of my mouth, I mean really can't believe I said it without cracking up or turning red, I figure just about anything else on the list of needs to be done is a cakewalk from here on out...

I call it Operation W.I.T. Or translated into modern day English, operation whatever it takes. Because that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Whatever it takes.

This girl is not going down without a fight!

Small Reminders

Nothing can get me writing quite like a moment of weakness. And tonight one of those moments instead of leaving me speechless has given me just enough motivation to remember that I have a blog, though more or less abandoned for these past few months, waiting for me to give it words...

Needless to say this is not the levity my mother suggested for me to write. Nor is it really bad either. It's just exactly what it is which is a small level of disappointment mixed with a good level of reality combined with a hint of possibility that maybe now friends can just be friends and mean it. And honestly, I think that now after two years gone, I've learned enough about myself to know that this needs to be enough.

If there is anything I've proved, it's that I can move forward without always feeling the need to look back. Or at least not looking back as often as I used to. And maybe by getting an answer to a question that should not have even been asked, reason temporarily abandoned has been restored.