Over the Moon

Autumn is raw, a short stretch of skin rubbed until it burnt up. I don't want the cold. Desperately. I am looking out th window and it has begun to rain, and unless I get to find your hands and take you out in it, go nuts in it, feel full and risen in it, I'd rather it just go away.

I could use the sun right now. I could use it ripping right through me. I could use that burn. I could sit on the beach with my friends waiting for the sun to split on water, bust open. We would trip over ourselves with glee. Skirts and dresses and no-sleeves and bathing suits and water bouying our hair into mushrooms of brown and red and blonde. Spinny-wild-open summer. God, I miss you already.

But, I have found things now, in autumn, November having stuck its fingers through the open doorway, my birthday on its way, possibilities with the most frighteningly beautiful palms lying wide for me.

I was thinking on my drive today about how I always feel unallowed. I feel like I need to ask permission. I see an open hand and I say in my stomach, "Can I? Please?" And it's not needy. It's not weird. It's the question, "What do you want?" And the answer, "Yes."

I'm really tired of staying behind the door, waiting for someone else to open it. I feel like so much of my childhood was so out of my hands. I was taught to be polite, and I took that lesson to heart. I never asked for anything. Not ever. And if I did, I felt terrible for that. In a lot of senses, I was made to feel terrible for that. I was made to feel childish, stupid, ashamed.

Even now, I imagine reaching out and though my reaching might seem welcomed, I'm waiting for the grimace, the, "I didn't think you'd actually do it."

At the same time, I have so often become the person who reaches and reaches and reaches and wants to give and help and help and nothing. No mutuality. That terrifies me. That terrifies me deep. That dives into my stomach with the yearning and the two mix and a paralysis ensues and what do I do?

I am thankful for the question, "What do you want?"

What an important question. What a way to live. Asking people and asking ourselves, "What do we want? Where shall we go, and what shall we do, and what will be our first big or small or teensy tiny step?"

Perhaps someday, muscles aching, emotions stretched, courage swollen and bright, spirit broken and mended, we will make our way over the moon.