Slimy

Strange how I already feel lost in the new year. It's been a long time since I've been in this place, this low place. I feel so flat, and I'm not sure how to start on some kind of ascension to mental health and serenity. There's a lot of insecurity to be dealt with, a lot of grief to feel. For some reason I feel like the most slimy disgusting thing right now. I want to get rid of that feeling. I've had it with that feeling. It's about time I let go, celebrate myself, and somehow move on to appreciating the people around me. I would really like that.

A good part of me just wants to run off to a different state or country and hide out in some apartment for a year just catching up on sleep and silence.

Old Soul

A secretary in my office took one of my poems off the printer this morning and read it. It was a piece I'd written about an old woman contemplating her body, from the inside. I didn't like the poem all that much five seconds after I wrote it, and I know some things are inaccurate and need fixing, but the secretary said to me, "You, my dear, are an old soul. You are in tune with things you've never experienced. You're one of those people who has come back in a different form." It was probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. She said her grandma used to say it about children who seemed to know more than they should, who were intuitive. Anyway, I wanted to write it down so I don't forget it. It meant a lot. Here's a little piece of the poem:

She still doesn't understand where the cancer

has seated itself. In the aged palms of her ovaries,

climbing up and down the ropes of her veins,

napping in each swelling node as if they were

tree-houses, as if they were forts waiting for disease

to tell its ghost story beneath the foreboding glow

of flashlights. She watches the tumors roll out

against her skin in the tender spider veined cavity

behind her knees, in the weighted slope of her jaw.

I get to leave work early because of the snow. Then I get to finish one graduate school application.

A first post is so intimidating.
I don't even know if I can handle it.

Today I made it in to the office with a gigantic bag full of books: a few collections of poetry, one self-help book, a couple theology volumes, and my journal. I was so excited to just read and write and learn and grow. Now I've been here for over two hours, and I've merely roamed the internet for interesting sites and people. I've found some, and then decided to just join them by creating my own blog.

So here it is. I'm excited about it.

In the spirit of Sabrina Ward Harrison's phrase, "You must make what you most need to find," I am creating space for my own words and communication with other sweet growing souls.