turn me inside out
i feel like dorothy from the wizard of oz...everything's gray here. and i'm waiting for this storm to be over, waiting to wake up to a display of color again. waiting, but maybe i need to start walking. i was thinking today about swimming, and how much i miss it. the feeling of water against your body and making the intervals and feeling fast, getting on top of the water, the ache in your muscles and the grind in your joints and the shaking throughout your body from the work, thinking your limbs will fall off or your lungs explode. but it's the most amazing feeling in the world. i miss it; not just swimming, but that part of my life. i can't though -- can't go back. i can only move forward, walking toward color again now.it stuns me how attractive kindness is. or how ugly the lack of it is. people more than anything want to be loved for who they are, not who they pretend to be, not who they want you to think they are, maybe not even who you falsely perceive them as being. and my father? he and i, we have our differences. his words can cut me deeper than anyone else's, and they do. they do. but he's so kind. i see that in him and i love it, love the way he talks to little kids or holds little babies or teaches my youngest sisters how to play basketball, or the way he rides his bike to work so we can take the cars, or goes to visit his own dad in the nursing home or roofs people's houses just because he knows how, or the way that sometimes -- every once in awhile -- he'll drop everything else, all these differences, and just laugh with me. it's in that moment that i look at him and forget the pain and see him the way that he wants to be seen. for who he really is. it's hard to think of my father and smile. but i'm reaching. it's so hard that it makes my heart ache... but i'm reaching.
i'm weary yet trying to fight it. today is stinky cheese's b-day, big 6. grace-face...i love that little girl. and it's fall, and i'm waiting for the heat to die out so that i'll have a reason for feeling so cold.
love forever,
*bex