To Who I Am Becoming...

She had failed. There was no other way to say it. Despite all of her accomplishments, all of the honours that people attributed to her, she had failed at the things that mattered most, and no amount of humour, self-deprecating or not, could change that fact. For years she'd hid behind her staged smile and her enticing humour. She had worked hard at the tasks that had clear beginnings and endings and could be accomplished by mortals. She dreamed of being more, of doing more, of meaning more. Yet, when opportunities presented themselves, she failed to live up to the possibilities. People. That was the part of life that she had failed. She had failed to truly care about or for people. Caring led to pain. Caring meant investing in another person, only to have that person reject all that had been invested into them. It was easier not to care, to create a safe distance so as not to get hurt. It was easy for Her to do. Like a switch that she could flick on and off, she could care or n...

So, all day, from the moment that first ray of annoying sunlight started invading the inner sanctum that is my bedroom, I wanted a day...one day for myself. I had this dream of being able to wake up, make myself a wonderful breakfast (all the while having music play in my head worthy of a 90's sitcom), lazily get dressed and begin to put my life back together. No family, no obligations, no guilt, just peace. The morning was wonderful. My brother, who never seems to get going till about noon, was not making noise in his shop that is located on the other side of my bedroom window. My parents were at work. And I was living my dream. All things were wonderful until the afternoon when, like a ball that rolls down a hill and lands in a pond of goo, the whole thing turned into a disaster. For some reason, I was just unable to recover. I couldn't pull it back to a place where the dream could continue living. Instead I turned into the worst version of myself, swearing at my family in my...

Every night, in a room that might resemble a comfortable conference room, three people walk in and sit around a table. Each is dressed differently and reflects the positions they hold. One is dressed in loose dark clothing. She is uncomfortable at the table and yet makes sure that her presence is known for she will be in the position of power, one day. The next woman is dressed as though she has just stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine for powerful women. Her black and white suit is stylish and pressed. She is clearly comfortable with her documents, notebooks, and beverage. Where ever she sits, in her mind, she is ultimately in charge. The last woman contrasts greatly from the first two. She does not see herself as "in charge" because she sees no hierarchy. No one is above another. She two has brought documents and notebooks with her but each is bright and fanciful. She too is dressed as though she tried to fit every color she could think of into one outfit and yet st...

I sit at my desk, in my dark office, surrounded by faces of family members and loved ones. Pictures, tokens, and anything that reminds me of those who are not with me engulf my space. I truthfully don't know if this makes being in my office easier or harder. Certainly, I love thinking about games, laughter, and stories from other places but I also need to be awake to the emerging stories that are happening here which doesn't happen when you are living in the past.  I don't know why I am also being resistant to some of the work I need to do. I enjoy my research, I tell myself often. I like my participants and thinking about their lives. I like writing and finding beautiful words to describe the indescribable. And yet, I am unable to, in that moment, do the work that I love. Somehow it does emerge and words and pages are formed but I do not yet know how it happens when I so clearly refuse to work.  Despite this feeling, I show up at my office everyday. I sit at my desk...

Truth be told, I’m not sure why I am writing this morning. Perhaps it is because I feel like I should be writing more often. I don’t know. As I write it seems that my fingers are no longer used to typing out words. Nearly every other word, it seems, needs to be back traces or re-written. It seems that my thoughts no longer know the path from the brain to the fingers the way that they once did. I wrote such wonderful things. Such amazing, beautiful, magnificent things. But now it seems that I can only write about how I no longer write. I keep looking online for things to improve my life. I watch shows and wish I were the people who did amazing things. I am looking and looking but not finding. What is it about me that cannot be the person I see when I close my eyes? Why can I not WRITE !!?? I think for the next little while I will make a promise to myself. Every morning, before I start work, I will write something. It will not be elegant or eloquent. It may ...

I have always considered myself as an open person. No one could ever say that I was an "over-sharer" but ask me a question, any question, and I will tell you an answer or tell you that I will not be answering that question. This particular trait has gotten me in trouble on more than one occasion. I learned early in my life that people often ask questions that they do not really want someone to answer, especially not truthfully. So now I ask, when I sense that someone might be asking me one of these questions, if it is a question that they really want an answer to. Some have responded yes, to mixed results. Most change the subject or continue their musings without giving me time to answer. For myself, I rarely ask anyone a question or for someone's opinion of me because I am not sure that I would want to hear what would be said to me. I have never thought about this particular quirk of mine. I figured that it was a quality that made others like me (whether or not I liked...

She sat at her desk. It had been a nice walk from her home to the place that often felt more like home than where she lay her head at night. It had been a long while since she had picked up her pen to write anything but something compelled her to write today. Perhaps it was the rain that seemed to wash away all of the refuse that muddled the world. With the cleansing rain went her indecision and ambiguity. She was remembering how she had come to this place, this desk, this life. Somehow she had forgotten how she had come to be over the years. Those memories had been buried under "To Do" lists and obligations and her own desires to please others. Who knows when it became more important for her to honour other's stories for her than herself but it had. In the quiet moments, on walks or the silent melodies of rain falling, she longed to run to trees and earth and write her connection with the world as she had done in the past. Today would not be the day to drive out of the...

It is odd, I think, how something grabs you, pulls you into its self even before you know that it has happened. Yesterday I decided to walk home. It was one of the rare days where the sun and its accompanying warmth were something I enjoyed instead of being pained by. It was good to have the time alone. Even with people all around me I felt a comforting separation, like the way you feel when wind blows so hard against your body that you feel you could lean right into it and the force of the wind would hold you up. How does the song go? Alone but not lonely? That is how it felt. There was only me; my consistent breaths filling every space in myself, the tension of my blood filling my veins as it has longed to do for some time, the elation of my muscles, relaxed yet exuberant in the exertion. My rhythmic footfalls seem to pulse in time with the rest of me and seems to count time moving forward and yet not moving, like how running on a treadmill makes you feel like you have moved great di...

Some days are harder than others. She knew this just as everyone who breaths air knows it. It had been a hard day for her. In truth it had been a hard week, month, even year. She was able to innumerate all of the ways that it had been hard, the deaths of loved ones, the miles of separation from those who sustained her, the long hours of solitude, and the constant realization that nothing can really be checked off the "To Do" list. She honestly tried not to think about these and all the other reasons things had been hard but with the blinding sun, coming earlier and earlier and staying later into the night, came the mocking tones and the pinching reminders. There were many good things too She knew. She listed these every night and most mornings. She reminded herself that there was good all around her. She wanted to enjoy the beauty, the fun, the gloriousness that was constantly around her. She felt most at peace in the grey translucent light that others called darkness. It w...

Tomorrow we are going to move We move a lot I like it … mostly It means putting everything in boxes Mom and I drive in the car with our suitcases Dad and Marc come later with the big truck The driving is fun We play games and eat fun treats When we get there we have adventures and explore I like it when dad and Marc come and bring all of our stuff I get to put everything in my room the way I want it We are the weird ones No one moves around like us No one has adventures It is a little sad because we leave my friends but we always have friends where we move There are always friends We have moved a lot   I get to be fun I am the same but I get to be new too I think we might stay for a while It’s a little scary Mom says that most kids stay at home when they are not at school I go to daycare usually because mom and dad are at school I also go to another place after school some days We like taking trips to see family and friends a lot too...

I don't know how long I have laid here. Time is not counted the way it is in other places, it is counted in  sunrises and sunsets, drops of rain, cloud formations, lady bug steps, and a thousand other ways that are barely noticeable. I once stood tall like the others, reaching to the sky and providing shelter to others and strength to the earth. It has been a long time since I have fallen. I used to be upset about it, feeling the texture softening on one side, being invisible to all those who look up. I had been upset, thinking that I would no longer be able to find my place in the world, a place that mattered to the whole order. I was upset until She came. I had never seen anyone here. I heard stories of people coming to places like mine, but not never this far out, this uninteresting of a place. But, here She was, walking as though she was always meant to come here. As she moved, she touched my friends with kind fingers, making her way to…me. I thought she would pass me by. S...

She couldn't always put a name to what she was feeling. Her life was good; happy. By many means of measurement, She had nothing to complain about. She had a good job that might matter to someone with good friends who made everything seem wonderful. She had good friends that were always there for her if she ever called; She didn't, often. She had wonderful family who showed her all of the different ways of being in the world and the joys that could be had. She had all that she needed to live a comfortable life with relative meaning. And yet … She could not help but think that it might not be enough. She looked out her window at the ever darkening sky with lights being lit for those who might be traveling  like a twinkle of possible lives and adventures that could be lived. She could look into softening light like a fortune teller who looks into her crystal ball. She heard the echoes of lives that She could have lived, the people she could have met, the people she could have be...

Yesterday I watched two little girls play. They were going on a plane, vacationing, to the Miss Universe Planet. They packed what they needed and another two kids were the flight crew and pilot. They were not playing together but their games happened to connect. I began to wonder, why are they playing this game? Is it that this is what they view adult life to be? Is this what their parents talk about? I wondered about my own playing and so I called my mom. "What games did I play?" "What do you mean? We were never a big game family." I tell her about the children I watched and my wonders about my own life. "When you were that age we lived by the Koreans. You would play guns with them. I remember one day you came running in yelling that the boys were chasing you with guns. I came out; I thought they were going to hit you. You looked at me and said "They have guns! Isn't that great?!" You loved their little AK-47s". My mom tells me about...

She often sat on this bench. The wood was old, the paint faded, but it fit here. In this park it was one of the oldest things here but somehow it had survived three high school keg parties, two mayoral renovation campanes, and countless couples breaking up and making up. It had stayed. She liked to sit here were you could only just barley make out the houses from the trees because of how they seemed to have grown together. She liked the open feild which despite the space never seemed to have a lot of sporting events or large gatherings on it. And the trees. She liked the trees because they looked like the bench. They were like old friends who have taken on the likeness of the other and so you can never picture them not existing together. Today was the kind of day She liked most of all. The grass was still green despite the fact that the temperature had started its decent. There were people around but they were sparse and unique like the candy you find when cleaning a child's room...

They say that the darkness lies. I don't think that is true. We lie to ourselves. We lie to others. In the darkness there is nothing but you and the lies you tell yourself. I have always liked the darkness because that is where I can decide what lies I need to get through, what I need to survive the party I need to go to, the class I will sit through, the conversations that are of things I have no interest in. In the darkness I decide what I will tell myself to get through. Perhaps they are not lies, just stories. Stories that may be true, already lived, told, past. Stories that are not yet true but have the possibility of becoming true because I am telling them. Stories that will never be true, they are not part of a life that I will ever live but make me happy that they exists. Kneeling by my bed at night, I tell myself these stories. Tonight I imagine a life I do not yet live. The point is not that I sit in darkness lamenting a life I wish I had but to see, with a perfect clar...

Words choke my breath strangling the crying child within my breast. The cacophonous sounds of ideas cut my skin with flesh and barbs. In vibrant colors I hide in florescent shadows away from sound and breath. The giver of adopted life has robbed with caring fingers that which she first gave freely. My smiling war-cry dispatched. Why? and how could you; you take what was not yours? Your celestial chimes declare my strength my ringing brilliance. Your singing praise strangles the growing life struggling to be corporeal. My words are missiles zooming, seeking their target. I see you, they see me. I have given myself the currency for peace to co-exist in illusion. Incarceration by my own hammer I have placed you as the warden not seeing the portal to voice and grace. I wait in quicksand sinking then rising holding my freedom. My voice restored, the bankers refund my currency for peace. I am triumphant Silently, silent no more victoriously a...

The snow and the cold licked her skin trying to make everyone go faster, go inside, get moving in cars. The cold and the snow tried to reach past her skin but she was immune. Her family was leaving. For four days they had shared her life. They had slept in her rooms, watch movies on her TV, met her friends, laughed with her, ate with her, and always there were stories being told and being made. For Four days her whole world was incredible. Her world was still incredible, but now it was a little quieter. She stood in the harsh light, making visible the painful events. She stood in the cold that was trying to take away her warmth and watched her family pile into their car and drive away. There was sadness, yes, but not now. That would come later when the silence of her home deafened her. It would come when she would think of a joke and would realize that no one was there to laugh at it. It would come when she tried to decide what to eat and no one was there to make a wild and spontan...

Every week I sit in church and think about my life. I think about what I want to do differently. How I have fallen short. Those who might help me be better. Those who I could help be better. And the ways that I can see more wonder in the world around me. Every week I make these lists in an attempt to focus me and remind me of things that I have forgotten when life has gotten jammed with other things that are less important. I have spent the last two weeks practically alone, however. I have not "gone" to church as it was General Conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which I watched in my home wearing my PJ's. I have not made my usual lists of goals and improvements. Today I decided to do something that I have not done in a very long time. Instead of making lots of lists of things to do I choose one thing. Today I was not going to watch TV and see where my day took me. Instead of getting lost in some show I Cleaned my kitchen Tided up my bath...

In the past I have written stories that were about me but where the main character was "She". Writing about She allowed me some distance so that I could talk about it. I have written this new piece about me without "She". The dry air prickles my skin with tickling fingers. My hands caress the desert grass feeling the hidden life that flows up through the earth with all of the stories, histories, and people that have been there before me, that I am now a part of. My eyes are closed but I don’t need them to see the blue sky with sparse clouds that are white but also carry the color of the land. The air carries the voices of those who found this land and became part of it. My blood flows like the red rock with the rhythms of the people and animals that have passed. This is where I am from. These are my people. Many may say that I have no right to say this, as they have. Calling me outsider, pretender, and unbelonging. They have scoffed at me. T...