Sunday, April 17, 2005
Off Days
There are just some days when I don't feel like writing. I am not in the MOOD to write anything, because I know that if I do, I will have to buck up and face those skeletons in my closet...you know, the scary ones that make your heart pound when they fall out of the closet door upon opening it. I have a lot of skeletons, perhaps not as many as some people and definitely more than others. MY skeletons wear name tags..."guilt", "shame", "self-pity", you name it, those skeletons are in there. Each one of those shifty stick figures comes from some place deep in my past that has created them, and they stay there because its hard to sweep them out. Fear keeps them there, because closet cleaning is not only dirty, but risky business. When we clean out that closet, we risk bringing up old memories we don't want to remember, and old emotions that are painful to re-engage. We know that it's time for Spring-cleaning, but coming up with the cleaning supplies (courage, hope, and self-love) is expensive. Picture a woman dressed head to foot in a haz-mat suit, resembling, in a large way, an astronaut disembarking on a strangely colored planet, toilet brush in one hand and pad and pen in another, and you picture me getting ready to write. It's not easy. I wish it were.
Often times when I start piercing those dark corners, the tears come, and as I write, they fall on the page. But, they are tears that wash away those impurities. The black pieces of pain are picked up in that saline holy water, and are expelled through my tear ducts. Yes, I am a cryer. And it FEELS good when its over. The best thing in life is being able to acknowledge my shortcomings...to admit my faults, to clear myself of things that are NOT my fault, and to realize that those things, though they affect my life, do not have to affect it in negative ways. Those bad memories are just that...memories. They cannot hurt me NOW. When the tears subside, the sun comes out, and everything is so much clearer and cleaner, and its at this time when I realize that one of my skeletons is gone, and although there are other skeletons to tackle, at least there is now one less.
Often times when I start piercing those dark corners, the tears come, and as I write, they fall on the page. But, they are tears that wash away those impurities. The black pieces of pain are picked up in that saline holy water, and are expelled through my tear ducts. Yes, I am a cryer. And it FEELS good when its over. The best thing in life is being able to acknowledge my shortcomings...to admit my faults, to clear myself of things that are NOT my fault, and to realize that those things, though they affect my life, do not have to affect it in negative ways. Those bad memories are just that...memories. They cannot hurt me NOW. When the tears subside, the sun comes out, and everything is so much clearer and cleaner, and its at this time when I realize that one of my skeletons is gone, and although there are other skeletons to tackle, at least there is now one less.
