my crappy kitchen wall moment

posted by Melissa
I have spent several hours in the past few days faced with vocal demons that swelled and spewed silently from my past incarnations and landed right in the front of my personal inner dialogue.

They just showed up, unannounced.  Uninvited.  And ruthless.

Especially since I was riding this wave for a while now where I thought I had left them behind.  Like I learned to surf and they were buried in the sand on shore, every wave I would ride in, the more sand that would cover them up.  And surfing feels soooo good.  I guess I assumed they had decomposed by now, back to the earth, the cycle of life.

Nope.  Not a chance.

inspiration

It left me wanting a break.  Not just from the voices of self degradation, all gritty and scratchy on the skin like the sand they were never truly buried under.  But from everything.  From laundry, dishes, cooking, school, being a wife and mother, being a friend, brushing my teeth, and blogging.


There I was sitting slumped over on my kitchen chair, the one that makes black scrape marks all over the wall it sits in front of.  It is so annoying, and yet I do nothing about it, I probably never will.  It's one of those things like a curtain rod that you finally get up, but it is a little crooked and you think...I'll fix that one day, probably next week when I have more time.  Geez, I mean, at least I got it up there today.  And then it just become what is.  And we live with crooked curtain rods.  At least I do.

Hunched over and staring into the pink hued space of my kitchen, I muttered that I wanted a break.  I don't mean to sound melodramatic, I do assume that all of you have these...oh what does that whiny, rich white lady call them form that book where she travels the world because she's sad...oh yeah, "bathroom floor moments".  Or in my case, "crappy, scraped-up kitchen wall moments".  Only I can't just get up and fly off to some country that starts with the first letter I think of.  (I really should give that book another chance.)

A break.  I thought about how I pretty much have been having a break this month, at lest with the blog, not posting as much as I would like.  But the break I longed for wasn't like that.  It wasn't like deciding you are going to take the day off and get back to everything tomorrow.  My break would be like taking a week off and coming home to find that someone straightened the curtain rods, patched up the kitchen wall and repainted it, cleaned the house, did the laundry, made a dentist appointment for you and your kids and maybe even posted a super funny witty blog post in your name.

Is it that we long to be a kid again once in a while?  Where someone picks us up and tell us everything is going to be OK.  And we actually believe it.  Where your parents do make your dentist appointments (ok, sometimes it takes us a while, but they finally went!), and wash your dirty clothes, and feed you...even if it is horrible, healthy food.

I don't know, I was just thinking today about how I can create something in my life, the blog, that brings me such growth and joy and then one day all of a sudden it feel like a burden.  I guess the best thing to do is to find the ways that help us in those moments.  To get to know ourselves enough to know what eases those confusions and quiets those negative voices.  Because no matter what, life is going to bring you "crappy kitchen moments" sometimes...there is going to be sadness and upset...there's no getting out of that if you are alive.  We may manage everything, do our best to plan those feelings away, but eventually they surface.

I hope that we all have partners, friends, loved ones and family that we can talk to through that kind of thing, to help us see the best in ourselves.  And that we have cultivated our own creative outlets and healthy choices (yoga, anyone?)  to ease back into the growth and joy.  Because, that is also what you can't get away from in life, sometimes it is just going to be good.  No matter how bad you think it sucks sometimes.

I am so thankful for Jamie and my friends and family, I believe it is through having a support system that we can get up the nerve to face those waves...even when we end up with our face in the sand.

that's all.
Melissa