Moonshine & Wanderlust

... a cosmopolitan view from a southern perspective

a Beautiful disaster

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glass

So many questions, so many thoughts and finally, a resting place – a question to God…

“Do you think I’m unbreakable?”

Broken pieces – we’re all made up of them. Sometimes we cut ourselves on other people’s broken pieces, sometimes we cut ourselves on our own. I’m broken. I’m shattered. I’m a mess. I’m human. So many thoughts and words and feelings are a constant bombardment. Solace and peace is what I hope for. The itch to flee is ever present, lingering below the surface… slowly simmering and sometimes rising far enough to the top to boil over and make me burn on the inside. But, I can’t run away. Why? Because, somewhere deep down inside of me there is something growing. Hope. Sympathy. Empathy. Care. Love. Compassion. From my mistakes I am finding renewal. But, it’s hard. It’s harder than anything I’ve done before. I find myself facing the fire, feeling the heat and the burn and the pain and withstanding. No truer words were spoken than “two steps forward, one step back.” Most days, I think I have it together pretty well then I think God must look at me and think: “Silly girl… Let me show you more.”

My mom, in her wisdom and often in spite of my deep refusal to believe her, used to tell me so often “life is going to be hard, Patty Lauren.” Life. Is. Hard. I never wanted to believe her – because God gives us free will and I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to screw my life up. I got that one totally on lock. I’ve made mistakes – I’ve made them because I was young, because I was stupid, because I do take to heart that you shouldn’t regret anything, that even if you make a mistake it was right in that moment, etc. I’m a product of infiltration. I’ve done things against my better judgment, against my own moral compass, against what my mind was telling me… and, now I am facing the repercussions of my choices. You can’t see it by looking at me – I’m not the face of meth, I haven’t developed an eating disorder, I don’t self harm – at least, not on the outside. I’m still trying to wade through these deep waters – to come to terms with my feelings and what I think.

I never thought life could be so complicated. I never thought my life could resemble something I’ve read about or watched in movies. I feel like a loose barnacle that is just floating along, waiting for that next piece of solid stability to cling to. On those nights when the wind blows hard, the rain pelts the glass and the howl from outside numbs the feelings inside… the nights when your head is so heavy with thoughts that you wake up the next morning to a headache you are sure is caused by the words and emotions trying to escape your brain… the nights when there is no escape… Those are the nights you bleed from the brokenness.

{as always, all pictures are my own.}

Hey, it’s just …

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Hey, it’s just one night, it’s not like it’s forever
I just want to feel better

How many times have we looked for an escape route in order to “feel better”? The fine art of escaping takes many forms – we all have our vices and they seem be exascerbated by whatever is ailing us at the time. We ache to escape when things get tough – when we want to forget the pain in our lives. My childhood left little room for me to escape a situation I might have found hurtful or stressful – I read to escape. Books were my safety net and safe haven. However, adulthood opened up a Pandora’s box of escape methods. I went from very limited parameters to no parameters.

For a long time, I didn’t feel the need to push my escape boundaries – I nudged them a little, sure, but for several years I never full fledged sacked myself up against a wall. My first real grownup, big-girl, “I can do whatever I want” escape came in the winter of 2011. I had gotten some pretty unexpected and hurtful news from one of my best friends and suddenly, the idea of reading seemed very ten years old of me. I found myself in a blur of actions and feelings that landed me, alone, on the floor of my apartment. From cold to cold – a friend came and transported me from the cool linoleum of my kitchen to the cold and hard bathroom tile. It’s funny how we hit these walls with such force, yet we visit them again and again – no matter how badly they can make us feel.

So, once you find a boundary that doesn’t dull the pain anymore, you move on to the next one… and the next, then one above the last one, etc. We climb the rungs of the numb ladder in hopes to find something that will squelch the longing, the pain, the ache, or the empty forever. But, it’s not to be found. It’s a bottomless pit that begs to be filled. In those moments when alcohol numbs, drugs soothe, other people distract, sleep blankets, we are temporarily satiated. We forget – the line to the top of our empty gauge is full – until the escape stops. It comes to a hault. We learn to ride out the escape route for as long as we can – we stretch it as far as it will go and each route lasts a different time than another, so perhaps we combine our escape routes in hopes of creating one giant ride of oblivion.

The thing is – we can never escape. We try and perhaps for a time we are transported to a place where we forget, temporarily, or our wounds are salved. But, unless we are willing to make peace with whatever is causing us to run toward escaping, we will never truly be free. In more recent times, I found myself trying to get out of town for a couple of days when I was going through something that shot up my “escape” flag. After doing this a couple of times, I realized I was missing out on really wonderful moments with friends and family and myself because I was still consumed with what I was trying to escape. It almost felt like a burden because I was so entwined in my own feelings I failed to notice so many things. When I started to change my attitude and stopped using things I loved as ways of escape – traveling, people, the ocassional glass of wine – I enjoyed them for what they were and how they enriched my life, not how they could be used to duct tape the broken pieces of me together.

I’m still learning how to “cope” with life as an adult – I still nudge my boundaries and I’m still tempted to flee. But, I am getting better at being a little bit more gentle with myself and allowing those feelings and emotions, no matter how negative or painful, to exist and be with me until it is their time to pack up and move on. I don’t use experiences or people or things I enjoy to be bandaids for emotional craters that are far too deep for them to cover. Running away from those feelings only seems to make them more eager to stay. Every experience is a lesson – trying to block it out can cause us to miss out on something that in the end could be more beautiful and powerful than we ever imagined.