On being authentically me

Yeah, it’s not like I have much of a filter, so being authentically me isn’t usually a hard thing to do.  When frustration runs rampant the filter I have becomes nearly nonexistent. I have a low threshold of patience for people who repeatedly do the things they forget they are supposed to do and a lower tolerance for the statement… just this time.  When I hurt, I have an even lower tolerance for absolutely positively NO personal space (and that happens a LOT).

That’s not really what I mean by being authentically me.

I know it is very misunderstood.  I know it is very ridiculed.  I know no one understands how much it means but they do seem to think it it is PURE FREAKING MAGIC and that the money (what little of it that is actually generated… making it actually a waste of time) will come without spending more then ten or fifteen minutes a year on the actual act of writing.

I also know that is is what keeps me sane.

It is the eve of NaNoWriMo again.  And this year I’m going to probably try to spend ten or fifteen minutes a week on doing something I absolutely love without publicly committing to doing it because I’m really tired of feeling like an epic failure because, in the end, everyone else comes first anyway.  But as the eve of the great event dawns (it’s not that it is halloween… it is NaNoWriMo eve) I take time to reflect on me.

My hands are screaming this morning (it is infusion day), there is a chill in the air. I love this time of year but I really just want to have the time to enjoy this time of year.  I think back on all of the fall days that have come and gone.  The days when I got up and went to the bus were the days that I loved breaking the newly formed ice on the shallow puddles on the road.  The days when I listened to the still quiet with the frost clinging to everything and listened to the creak crack of the ice giving way under my feet.  I miss the smell of rotting apples as I hid in the few remaining leaves in the transparent applet tree (I wonder where I can buy a transparent apple tree… those apples came early in the year… mid summer… July apples… and were the best for it).  Everyone knew where to find me… I was being so cute up in the tree writing… being stupid because everyone knows that people like me are epically doomed to failure (but… shhhh… I didn’t fail… I didn’t fail and no one who was sure I would even really cares).  There was a huge old maple tree high (high??? as I grew older, the high hill grew smaller and smaller) on the barn hill… it’s leaves always changed early and it was the neatest tree… some of the leaves went orange and others brilliant red.  The hog hickory nut tree always dropped its empty shells all over the ground.  Walnuts sent the smell of green black husks all over the play yard.  Every year they were gathered and put in baskets and every year the baskets were dumped somewhere because the nuts never got used.  And the dry rattle rustle of the corn left too long in the field played the music of fall.

Yesterday I ran away from home and went to the park.  It was amazing.  When I got there the fog was low and heavy on the pond.  The geese were just kind of hanging out chilling and it was peaceful in my solitary world.  I heard the leaves falling as they gave up clinging to the branches to tumble to the ground. I flushed a deer (beautiful 12 point… I startled him and him leaping through the weeds startled me), I listened to soft his of goose wings as a flock flew over (their wings cutting the silence softly… a honkless lullaby), and I walked and looked and remembered…

I walked, I listened, I inhaled the morning, and I remembered.

Memories cling tenaciously
so much fluff
stuck to the insides
and in the end
it takes but a breath
to set them to wing.

Too many times I am too busy (and entirely too short tempered) to be able to remember.  Sometimes I need to be reminded.  Sometimes I need the panic attack that comes with being curled under the desk in tears because I just can’t BE everything to everyone ALL the time no matter what anyone else seems to think, sometimes that is what I need to shake some sense into me… (sometimes just the sight of my bracelet, too) to remind me that it is okay to be authentically me.

Love and light
Happy NaNoWriMo eve
April
10/31/16