When the leaves change and all the scenery to your life is altered …. The sky grays…. as does the lake….and it empties, and looks cold and unforgiving. The city shifts….. the lake front and the bike paths grow more and more vacant every day, and the traffic increases as people retreat to their cars …. Baseball ends, and football begins….as the traffic jams switch sides of town….. you find your jackets, and are forced to wear sox….. your skin dries and pales…. The furnace kicks on… and the noise of it forces the tv louder for a while. Sometimes when the seasons change, I find myself severely affected by the shift, and that it just shows me how quickly life moves, with or without you… it just keeps going and you better learn to keep up. It’s hard to believe I’ll be 33 soon….. and still spinning without much forward progression….. to some that may be failure… I just think it’s my life, and won’t make apologies for it. But it can make you wonder…. where will I be in one, five, or ten years……. Still here? Just like this?

Do you ever have days where you feel like you are existing outside your own body? Watching someone that looks and acts just like you…… going about their day, and you're following them, just observing quietly. Sounds crazy I’m sure….but for some reason I’ve had a lot of those lately. Some days it feels like a movie….. that I’m not sure how I got to, or when its over or where to go after it ends. And almost that I don’t belong there, like this can’t possibly be my life now. It’s like I’m hovering 4 inches above ground, so that when I try to walk or steer myself in a direction…. nothing happens. I spin my wheels but they make no sounds and there’s no friction whatsoever. Kind of like when Gracie tries to run on the hardwood floors…… she is so determined, and she tries with all her strength but her feet just slide under her and she gets absolutely no where. It makes me laugh, but now I am getting an idea how she feels……

So the question being…… what is this feeling? Do I think about it, analyze it, should I even bother with it…. was it even worth mentioning? I don’t know. It’s not an unhappy feeling, although after reading the first paragraph I can see someone may get that impression….. its not. Some of the moments are almost too good to be true, so I sit outside myself and think “this can’t be happening to me…. This is too wonderful to be my life” and that’s when it feels like a movie…. As if I’m watching some amazing story that could never happen in real life. I have to let it in…. and I’m not sure how. This is my life….. but will it last? If I let it in…. really allow it to take over…. will it disappear, and how much will it hurt when it does? Or will letting it all in just make it that much better, and more permanent, and life long….and I really will go out someday thinking I actually had everything I had ever wanted? Just doesn’t seem real. Like I’m missing something or forgetting something….

When you take a leap of faith… even if its only within yourself… you’re completely vulnerable, whether anyone else knows about it or not. It’s terrifying. On a day like to today, I want nothing more than to go my church…..not in the conventional sense… those of you that know me well, and are closest to me, I have taken you there… and it is a place so beautiful that in just seeing it, you can’t dispute that there is something greater than you, and all of us….. and I want to go there and just sit in the silence and fight back the tears that come every time I visit there….. the most amazing feeling, because I’m not sad… I can’t tell you why I start to cry… but I just do, and that’s faith, that’s a connectedness to yourself, and to your soul, that I need to experience to remember I’m human, and flawed, and wonderful, and loved, and afraid, and strong, and alive if nothing else. I don’t get answers…. I don’t necessarily pray, or ask for anything… I just sit there, and that inexplicable presence that creates a lump in my throat and makes my eyes well up with tears… that’s my answer to who I am…..and why I’m here.

So….. later today, when my work is done I will get in my car and make the very long drive up the shore and sit quietly in that place so that tomorrow I will wake up having rejoined myself in this life I all of a sudden have, and this happiness that I’m sometimes not sure what to do with..... and certainly not convinced I deserve. I will sit there quietly until I am reminded who I am, and what I am capable of, so that I stop observing and return to living the life I have been so blessed with recently.

I'll let you know how it goes....
Love,
Cyn