The warmth of a Lover

It’s 3:00 am. I had a few good nights sleep but it’s back to this again.

It was one of those days yesterday. Upon contemplating my state of mind I determined that part of my discontentment is due to the fact that I have exposed my self to you people. Most of whom I will never meet.

Since I started posting my thoughts a few people have told me that I should continue to tell my story. Possibly even get something published. I usually let these kinds of comments go through one ear and out the other, (Like the ones people made about racing!) I don’t know if this kind of thing happens to you but there comes a point where you can no longer deny these nudges. As if God himself is speaking to you in little clips and phrases.

It started with a few of my friends telling me I should write. My response being “I am.” “No really, like getting stuff published.” Then I showed a couple of my posts to Nancy. “You need to keep journaling. There’s something about the way you write” People responded to my post in the same way. That’s what I love about the MMBA. People respond. The give feed back. They relate. Awesome.

So I go to work yesterday and I’m contemplating the impossibility of my life right now. The red tape I have to navigate to get the funding to go to school. Wanting to be a PTA but can’t wrap my mind around 2+ years of school. Adaptive equipment, the next poem or essay I’m going to write. How I have no business on a keyboard writing anything. I can hardly speak my native tongue; much less write it. I don’t know all the rules. My spelling and grammar are atrocious. So I ask Anna to hand me some magazines. I brought in a stack of them the other day. I needed a distraction from the thoughts attacking my gray matter. Wouldn’t you know it. She brings over a small stack. On the cover of the top one in bold print it says, ”Tell your story. A top novelist shows you how.”

Does this kind of thing ever happen to you? These moments of serendipity? It’s funny because there was another article in the very same magazine about this very same thing. How things ‘fall’ into place when we are living out of our truest selves. Hocus-pocus if you ask me but I simply can’t deny it’s happening. It happened the other day when I was writing a post. I’m at my computer. Snot rockets are flying. I’m wiping away the tears from my cheeks trying to lookup the definition of the word immense. My thumbs pick a random spot on the edge of the pages and wham! There it is. Wasn’t even looking. One of those coincidences that give you the chills and you begin to feel like there are strings attached to your every movement. Sort of like dejavu, which I get frequently. But not quite.

This also happened the day I went to the school and talked to an enrollment advisor. I just went to talk, really. Check out the PTA program. I wasn’t going to enroll. Then I got that burning in my heart. 100% sure I was in the right place. You just know. I turned and looked at a stack of books on my advisors table as I sat twisting my fingers around each other and swinging my foot well into next week, and there I saw it. The Big Book. The chills. The warmth after. “Are you a friend of Bill’s?” I ask. She says yes. Damn it. Another click forward. I give her my last $20.00 with the application and I walk out knowing I’m in harmony with my “destiny”. Puke! I stop at the gas station and the people in line behind me are talking about, you guessed it. Physical therapy. I’m riding the wave on this.

Unfortunately this confidence never last and I feel the rug being pulled out. These moments of surety, this knowing eventually lead me into another dark corner which leads me into another moment of finding the path again which leads to another dark corner and the cycle goes on and on and on…. So for now I will continue to grope blindly in the dark at this thing. Like you do when you wake from a bad dream. Fingertips like heat-seeking missiles searching for the comfort of the one who lays by your side.

I’m not saying I’m supposed to be a physical therapy assistant. I am saying that I know I was supposed to be there in that office on that day. And every unwanted step I take in this direction seems to string together more and more “moments” of knowing I made the correct turn in the maze. The chills, the warmth after, like clearing a blind downhill corner on single track at warp speed. The relief that comes when you see that there is nothing in your path.