Back to Myself

It's amazing how far I can get from me. I can spend so much time jumping into other peoples' heads, playing all the guessing games that get you no where, that keep you lost and losing.

Today has been wonderful. Truly. I am me. Yes, again, I have fallen back into this body, and I can feel the weight of it. I know the weight of it. It is familiar to me, and it is good. It is a good body. I am not ashamed of myself, today. I have no eyes watching, but for the two professors I met with today, and though one of them always tends to make me feel a bit intimidated--a bit lost and unprepared like I need to start winding up for the big race--the other was so kind and encouraging. I felt very warm leaving her office.

I spent some time at Grand Valley's library, while I was on campus, and found my favorite spot on the third floor. Whenever I have set foot in that library, even while I went to school there, I always would go straight for this very old tattered Carl Sandburg collection. I love it. I love it with my whole heart. His poems have touched me, deep. I run my finger over them and I feel him writing them, I feel him looking out on waves, women, his wife. I feel his words, homey, like the one he uses to refer to his wife, his Pal. Because I can't paste them here, for some reason, look up, "Clean Hands," and "Let Love Go On," and "Mag."

I feel quiet today. Quiet and warm and at home. I am at Lemonjello's in Holland, headphones full of Melody Gardot, Carla Bruni, Great Lake Swimmers. I like to go slow. I was made for slow. I have needed to have this time. To be.

I'm wondering if another factor in me feeling very much myself, very comfortable and real, as if my edges have rounded over and I am less jumping into heads, but resting in my own, seeing out my eyes, enjoying the atmosphere in a calm, organic sort of way, is that I've just finished writing twelve pages in my jouranl. Yes, I wrote everything. Every detail. I did my overanalyzing and wrote about my new feeling that overanalyzing is a big waste of my time and energy, and has lost me some good moments in exchange for wild eyed crazy-brain activity.

I wrote about losing myself by feeling insecure, by being adamant that I am no good. I feel like in my crazy-brainedness lately, I kept jumping between trying to feel worthy, and falling incredibly short of that. As all people seem to do, I wish I could go back. I wish I could go back to that brain and say, "Hey Sweetheart. It's alright. You're good, right now. Let yourself."

I'm glad to be back, and still feel a little foolish about my foolishness. But still, I came back. And I feel good now. I'm worrying about things. I'm researching jobs, internships, graduate school programs. I've been spending hours with my eyes wide as fear, working the computer screen up and down, reminding myself to breathe, reminding myself that this is not the end, that there are years ahead, and big chances ahead, and that hope is still here, and maybe some things are attainable. Maybe I haven't missed the boat. And if I have, it'll be back around in time.

Sometimes I feel like God is after me. I called about some jobs I'd applied for, and I had connections, and the positions apparently had been filled just as I turned in my application. I looked up any job possibilities online and nothing seems remotely promising, or even legitimate. I'm looking at graduate schools, thinking about the people I know who've gotten in and how they were so much more involved with things on campus, and I was always so busy working multiple jobs. Sometimes I feel screwed.

Truth be told, I may not have really tried yet. I know I'm scared. I'm really scared of taking a path, and missing out on a bunch of other paths; missing out on the other landscapes, cities, people, friends, lovers. I don't want to take the wrong path.

But I was thinking about this on my drive out to Holland. Is it possible, if we believe in any sort of diety, the Christian God perhaps, that we could take the wrong path? And what is predestination after all--how far does it extend? Are God's hands at my shoulders always, when I'm meeting my friends by accident at a coffee shop, when some stranger and I click, when my poem finally works, when I make the big mistake of losing myself in worry and fear and insecurity? Where is God? And what is he doing? I've asked these questions before. I've gotten answers.

I just don't want to choose wrong, you know. I don't want to miss out. I really don't want to miss out.

Amidst the questions, the deep swelling worried hope that I will take some course that will meet me with some sort of good life, maybe not perfect, maybe not bright and cheery, but organically beautiful, smelling of earth, smelling like morning breath and nasty cars, and good, like morning bodies, open as broken seeds, vibrant as the first stem of grass lifting her forefinger to the air.