Phase

Life is immensely complex. It constantly changes from the time we are created to when it all ends. How are we taught to deal with all these changes? Sometimes I wish there was a simple manual. Something with a title like “How to Never Make a Mistake You Will Regret for dummies”. Yeah, that would have been great.

From the beginning we are solely dependent on our providers. For me it was my mom and (for the fun stuff) my dad. As a baby I was carefree.  Being fed, read to, bathed, and tucked in at night.  Life was grand.

Then I turned five. I was put in this strange place with strange children. Kindergarten.  They really should remove the “kind” from the beginning of that word. Many interesting experiences occurred here. Like the time someone brought blanks for a toy gun into the classroom. I drove a pair of scissors through it which caused in explosion so loud it  scared the kid next to me off her chair.  Or the time I watched a boy push a girl off the monkey bars where she then landed on both of her wrists and broke them. Traumatic for all who witnessed it. What an oasis KINDergarten was.

Now we’ll skip forward to middle school. This is the time when school became extremely serious. Some not-so-healthy relationships were made. The first tastes of debauchery began. Boys became a dominating factor in my life. Hormones were raging all over the place. Middle school was a jungle and I quickly became entangled in its vines.  School was no more the place of the occasional shove off the monkey bars. It was real life. Drugs, alcohol, and sex.  As far as the education  part went, teachers tried their hardest to keep kids occupied and interested.  But we were ruthless. I wish I can find every teacher I ever wronged in that school and give them a hug and tell them I’m sorry for everything they were put through. Middle schoolers are living an awkward part of their lives where they are being pushed away from childhood  towards adulthood and don’t know it yet.Definitely do not miss those pre-teen years. That “dummies” manual would have been a savior in that moment.

Moving on. My twenties.  Glamorized in magazines and movies, the twenties are a time when you go away to college and maybe end up with an envied high paying job. My twenties were none of that. They were filled with dead dreams and more drinking.  I ended up going to a local college and stayed at home for a few years. I eventually (half-heartedly) finished school. I lived with a few boyfriends until I finally found the courage to live on my own.  That was one of the best decisions I ever made in my entire life.

After a month of living alone I got a puppy. A beautiful white pit bull named Max.  He was a handful but it was nice having some company and I really enjoyed taking care of him. He brought substance to my life. One day , just when I thought it couldn’t get any better,  I met a guy walking a puppy. After a few conversations with him I learned that not only had he just gotten his puppy, he had also just moved to the same street that I had just moved to.   Every time I saw him felt like that first time. Very cliché. I thought Maybe I love this guy.

I did and we married two years later in September.  The following year on Father’s day, I found out I was pregnant. So we started the exhaustive search for a house.  We eventually found our forever home and moved in fairly quickly. Finally settled in, we waited for our son, Luke, to arrive.

On March 3rd I became a mommy. Luke was born at a healthy weight of nine pounds and six ounces! My life was truly complete. Every pain and mistake that I had lived through was vanished from my life. I felt as if there were a reset button that was pressed somewhere in the universe. I knew from that moment that we would love each other unconditionally no matter what problems arrived in our lives.

We swim through the sewage that is poured over us in life.  We scoop our way through the trenches and salvage bits of hope. We hold on to all those lessons big and small taught to us by our parents and teachers throughout the year. I look back and wish I would have listened more. It would have kept me away from many sticky situations. Phases are something that we must go through. It’s what makes us human.  Even though some are tough, the outcome of some are worthwhile.

Pensive

I watch you take a few steps on the cold kitchen floor.  You rub against my leg and breathe out a single “meow”. You then make your way towards the door.  You stare at me. Finally understanding what you are getting at, I get up and walked towards you. I take hold of the doorknob, turn it, and slowly pull the door open to the world outside. There you can chase chimpmunks and enjoy one of your many turf wars with the neighborhood cats. Maybe find a few fledglings from a nearby tree. Whatever your little kitty heart desires.

But to no ones surprise, you decide not to go out. You turn around as if  I were playing a trick on you. You make your way towards the middle of the kitchen and I watch your eyes wander into the nothingness of the air around you. Oh my absent-minded cat. What do you want? What are you thinking about?

Darkness settles in. You’ve lost your way. Your mind loses its radiance. It’s slowly suffocating. Everything around is growing but you remain still. The years pass. The gloom lingers.

Thoughts begin to form. Your mind begins to expand. You feel again. After years wasted, a lost piece of you starts to break through. The piece of you that connected your strength and fears. You break the cycle.

Your mind was once a vacant paradise filled with mirages that could not be materialized.  Anger and shame brought you back from despair. They made you feel and with it let you live.

Your mind races. The words begin to form. You process the thoughts. Slowly. Detailed. Thinking of the mechanisms of the jaw and the movement of your tongue.  Everything in slow motion.  Hesitantly, you open your heart. The thoughts that had taken so long to perfect filter through your being. You open your mouth. Nothing. Silence. You struggle to scrape lost ideas. Phrases just grasped. They slip through the crevices of fear perforated through your thoughts. Your insides shake. The words are buried. Forever gone. A little piece of your truth dies.

Life does come to an end though sometimes it feels as if it’s never ending. We clutch our memories.  Sort them. Then try to keep their fragments through our forgetfulness. Through the unknown of each day there is something new that awaits us. We trek through feelings of hate, worry, and love as we try to figure out our place in this unforgiving sphere  we live on. Unfold the sky. Let it swallow you completely till your heart slows down. Embrace it. Release.