Check Your Damn Engine

My check engine light peacefully illuminates my dash with regularity, kindly suggesting I might want to perform a little maintenance. It freaks me out every single time it comes on - and yet -  I've gotten good at ignoring it. (Deliberate hand placement on the wheel blocks the light.) I do that for a while until, eventually, a rude CHECK YOUR DAMN ENGINE alarm blaresAnd I die ten thousand deaths.

(It just occurred to me this probably doesn't happen to anyone else. Other people don't drive beaters by choice.) That being said, it is my form of own self inflicted anxiety. A penance, I suppose, for driving new trucks we couldn't afford all those years.

Once my heart resumes beating, a panicked internal dialogue begins: Do I keep driving? Do I pull over now? Do I stop at the next service station and google mechanics? Is this a deal breaker? Am I going to have to buy a new car?

A year ago, if I had the windshield wipers and headlights on at the same time and used my blinker, the light would pop on, followed about two minutes later by the alarm and then my blinkers would start flickering rapidly and the fuse would blow. Like clockwork.

In relationships, triggers follow a similar pattern. First the warning lights. Then the alarm. If it happens once, it's not a thing. If it happens every time it rains and you turn on your headlights, it's definitely a thing. And since I drive the old Jeep, it's my thing. I own it.

After about six months I took the Jeep to the mechanic and got it fixed.

All that to say, I need to own my own problems. It doesn't matter whether the relationship is parent/child, sibling, spousal, or work related, if one person tells you that you're difficult to love, or hard headed it might be that they are full of shit. Maybe they are the one with the faulty blinker.

but if it happens more than once, it's probably not a bad idea to check under the hood. That's not to say the other person isn't still full of shit or that they don't need to check their own damn engine - just sayin. I still need to own my part of the equation.

And apparently, I have a problem requesting and/or accepting help.

Angry Drunk Cats

Sorting out my feelings is sort of like herding cats. Wet, angry, possibly drunk cats.

Opening the Pandora's box labelled - appropriately - Relationships, I upend it on the floor. A lumpy mass of tangled loops and knots spills forth. Anyone who has ever had a kids macramé project go awry knows exactly what I'm talking about.

I reach for the strand closest. It unspools and rolls away from me, staying just out of reach. The more I pull, the farther it rolls, like toilet paper disappearing beneath the stall door.

I let it go and tug at another loose end. This one is only slightly less amenable. It unspools a bit before stopping in Texas. March. 2019. Hospice. I drop it like a hot potato. Not ready to deal with that one.

There are plenty here to choose from. No need to jump off the deep end.

Make a choice or someone will make it for you.

I sit back on my heels and think about that for a minute before deciding maybe I'm okay with that. Maybe, for now, I don't want to make any choices. Maybe I am too broken, or too tired, or too lazy or just too whatever to trust myself to make decisions.

That's what depression does. It flattens. It makes everyday activities - choices, decisions - into impossibly large and complicated tasks. At the same time, it unplugs you, letting all the ambition or hope or interest you might have in the outcome of those choices or decisions seep out until you don't have enough energy left to care about the outcome.

For the record, I'm not in that space. But I've been there. And I don't want to go back.

I cast a sidelong glance at the tangled pile of relationship crap on the floor. Somewhere inside I realize it matters. It really matters. There's a reason I need to sort through this mess. But I also have a suspicion it all leads back through Texas and something that important deserves a little bit more than I have to offer right now.

I take an internal poll.

Nope. Not ready to go down that road.

Instead, I'm going to take a detour. I'm going to look at things that piss me off. Err. I mean, triggers. I'm going to examine my triggers.

How to Save Myself From Certain Demise

Cliff's Notes

Declutter.
I was sorting through my Maui clothes and found a stack of jeans that hadn't been on my body in a while. It quickly became obvious that I wouldn't be wearing them for another 20 pounds or so, which led me to the conclusion that my cheese has been sliding off my cracker for longer than I was previously willing to admit. It certainly predated this quarantine sitch we are all in.

Coping Mechanism Number One: Eat your feelings.

Noted. Apparently I have a lot of feelings. And they hide in ice cream.

Coping Mechanism Number Two: Identify and isolate the source.

Hmmm.

Work.

I changed jobs. Changed bosses. That's been stressful. Extremely stressful. Like, on a scale of one to pull my fingernails out by the roots, off the charts stressful. But - even though I'm typing with no fingernails - that's not really a new stress for me. I'm used to it. Crisis management seems to go along with my career choices. It's my weird little comfort zone.

Transfer.

Umm yea. Moving off island was a kicker. Moving off island and all the way to the east coast and living in an RV was a bit over the top. Maybe something in there was the trigger. 

I probe and poke around for residual soreness but, no. I don't think that's it.

Relationship issues. Um, yeah, but don't we all have those?

By the way, side note here: This is what it's like for me whenever I'm asked to put a fine point on my emotions. Responding to a simple How ya doing is a fire drill.

I answer fine because everyone always say fine. It's what you're supposed to say, just like you're supposed to say You're Welcome after someone says Thank you. So I say fine, but inside there is a room full of me freaking out. Wait! That has not been confirmed! We don't know if we are fine! We don't think we are fine! 

I take a roll call.
Are you fine, Work/Stella?
God, I don't know. I haven't checked my email in three minutes. Ask Mom-Stella - she's in charge.
Mom/Stella, You okay?
I don't know. I haven't heard from the kids lately and the last time I did I felt like I picked up on a vibe. That might not be good. Vibes are usually  not good.
I decide to check back with her later.
Finance/Stella, what's going on with you?
Well, the Jeep and the truck were both in the shop this month, do you really want to know the answer to that question.
Relationship-Stella?
She flips me off and walks out of the room. 

Bingo.

And that, my friends, is why I blog.

Burn It Down

The brain has a random little filing system, doesn't it? My early years are all framed by my sister's age. When she started school, I would have been around three. Memories from those years are plentiful and crystal clear. Dick and Jane were always running everywhere chasing after their dog Spot. The color of the bedspread in our room. The floor furnace in the hall. The next door neighbors. Our dog.

After that, there's a few years where everything is blurry and then suddenly it's second grade and my sister's age is no longer pertinent.

Don't worry. This isn't going to be a year by year account of family disfunction. But, for the record, if I ever do decide to drag the crazy train out of the closet, you don't get to be all up on a judgement trip here. You're fucked up too. We all are. Every.Single.One.Of.Us.

Anyway, I had something of an epiphany recently and it kind of pushed me off a cliff. It was after a rough week spent fighting fires at work and swatting cockroaches at home. It was Sunday. Appropriately, Shenandoah's Sunday in the South was on the radio. I was there - in the South - but I was also an entire continent and ocean away. My mind was in Hawaii, on the backroad between Waimea and Honokaa, having a malasada and coffee. Same Jeep. Same song.

It was one of those memories that is so sticky and thick it's tangible.

I pushed Hawaii back for a minute and concentrated being present in the beauty around me. In reality, I was driving along a tree-lined Carolina backroad, windows rolled down. The wind was warm in my hair and drenched with the smell of honeysuckle and wisteria. I noticed the fierce green colors, as if the fields were competing for top billing behind sad little barbed wire fences, wrapped in ivy. Signs advertising Bait and Tackle and Ice Cold Beer were scrawled on boards and tacked to random posts, also wrapped in ivy.

Suddenly, the road curled back on itself, forcing me to slow my roll. On the right, a clearing opened up and a little white farmhouse stared back at me, silent and still against a towering tree line. Without warning, I catapulted off the edge of time. My throat closed. My eyes filled. I clenched my teeth, gripping the wheel with white knuckles. Suspended in that moment, I was free falling through fifty seven years of life.

My life.

When did I stop living it? When did I let it go, allowing it to spool away from me; a kite on an ever lengthening string?

Shit. It's mostly over.

Now, that hurt. That fucking hurt.

I hit bottom and in a flash, was consumed in a raging fire of emotion.

Every feeling I have ever felt, everything good-everything bad-all the pain and all the joy. Everything.

It was a bonfire of memories.

They say when you die your life passes before your eyes. I always wondered how that would work. Like, math it out - there's no way for that to happen. Maybe if you just hit the highlights. But who picks the playlist?

Here's the answer: It's not linear.

Life is not linear.

We are not linear.

Time is a construct of man, with a beginning a middle and an end, created to help us file things away to be referenced later, whether by age or event or what song was playing on the radio.

All I know is in that split second I was three and Kathy had just come home from school. She was teaching me to read and we were squeezed in the space between the bed and the wall, legs curled in a pretzel and I was also seven and asking my dad for a horse and he was explaining budgets being such a weirdo with his horn-rimmed glasses but I loved him anyway and he was so handsome and as I stood beside him in the truck, the dusty summer heat beaming in, I was sure I would marry him when I grew up. I was fifteen and the house was empty and I was scared and thirty, watching my kids in the yard, filled with an impossibly huge love and equally huge trepidation and forty and fifty and fifty seven.

We are every age and every iteration of ourselves past and future. In that sense, we are ageless. We are eternal.

So yeah. That happened.

I stopped driving when the road ended abruptly - at a lake, ironically. I sat there and watched the water undulate. It was a lake but I heard the ocean.

It's been a couple of weeks. The fire is under control now. But I'm aware of it smoldering just beneath the surface. I haven't figured out what it means, I just know that I miss me. I miss laughing. I miss being happy. I miss my life. And while this is not exactly a declaration of independence, it's definitely a realization that something isn't right. And damn it, if I'm not going to live my life while I'm actually in it, I might as well burn it down and watch the cockroaches run.

It's not you, It's me

Hey. I'm back. I'll probably disappear again, as I appear prone to do. Don't take it personal. It's not you. It's me.
Full disclosure: I've changed.
Shit.
That's not actually true. (Eyes roll to ceiling, pause, sorting through different analogies) Actually, I haven't changed a bit. I'm just going to be me. Not Stella. Me.
By that I mean I'm not going to put on the filter that makes the thoughts inside my head more palatable, more acceptable. But I'm still going to sign off as Stella. Because, that's what I do. I stir shit and let Stella take the blame.
And we're both okay with that.
I blogged quasi-bravely through the divorce but I did so with the filter heavily applied. Stella turned up to 100. You got to see only what you were allowed to see. Only what was socially acceptable and would reflect positively back on your view of me. Grammar and punctuation on fleek. Sentence structure carefully crafted. Font chosen to accentuate the point. F words replaced with something less offensive.
Fuck.That.Shit.
So yeah, maybe I have changed.
(If messy storylines and/or unresolved angst bothers you, this is where you should probably leave.)
Guys, this quarantine thing has got me all up in my head. Which is ironic because it hasn't really impacted my daily routine. I'm a friggin hermit to start with. This virus thing is THE BEST EXCUSE ever to stay at home every night and weekend and do art and paint and drink coffee and not talk to humans.
Except, I can only do so much art and listen to so many podcasts before the monsters in my brain realize they are unsupervised. Once that happens, one by one, they slither out of the drains like cockroaches in a dark and empty room, skittering past my peripheral in subliminal trains of thought. It wasn't great but on Monday mornings when I flipped on the light they disappeared for five days and I pretended it hadn't happened.
That was March.
In April they grew bolder, hanging around longer after the alarm went off, popping their antennaed faces out occasionally during the week. I drank and they left, but eventually I ran out of tequila and they became the uninvited houseguest that stayed late and just never went home.
It's May now and the monsters have taken possession of the sofa.
I didn't realize I was spiraling into depression probably because it wasn't really a spiral. Nothing so glorious. Just a slow, slithering, slump. A decline. A flattening.
Unlike previous iterations, (Post-Partum, Mid-Life) this time the depression did not present itself in a clearly defined manner. I'm not piled into bed for days at a time. I'm not skipping showers or meals. I'm not crying.
Okay, I cry sometimes but not very often. And always for a good reason. Like when I drove past the little white farmhouse and suddenly remembered my dad was dead and life would never be as sweet as when I was six and I didn't know about monsters.
I'm just - God, I'm just faded. Fading? No. Definitely faded. It's not in process. It's done.
After the farmhouse incident, I took a good look at my guts and recognized the territory.
So I did the things. I cut out the sugars. I cut out the drinking. I cut off the Amazon Prime.
Not working.
I hit the treadmill and the walking tracks. I made it a point to go to bed at a normal hour, not 6:00 PM on a Saturday. I colored my roots.
Still not working.
Shit got real. I dusted off my bag of How To Save Yourself From Certain Demise tricks and dug deep.
Downloaded self help books including hypnotherapy. Played them throughout the night because you can absorb a lot when you are asleep and not multitasking. I turned off the news. Reduced the social media screen time. I.Prayed.
Just so you know how desperate I am: For a full week, I started every day listening to Max Lucado.
STILL nothing.
Fuck.Me.
On my way to work last week, Max's podcast ended and the next one in queue started up except it was an advertisement that bounced straight into a free sample of The Hilarious World of Depression which I had considered listening to back in March but at the time it just didn't resonate. Also I was probably drunk.
As stated in the previous post, I laughed out loud and snorted coffee through my nose and damn that hurt but it also felt so fucking good. It … felt.
I felt. 
And so, long story made only slightly shorter, I finally get to the point. I have to either get the monsters off my sofa or move out of this people-house of humanity. And I'm not ready to move. Fight or flight? Fight.
So, cockroach-alert: I am going to drag every one of you little bug eyed motherfuckers out into the light and rip your guts out for the world to see. It may  not make me feel better, but one thing is for sure - it will keep me occupied until the quarantine is lifted and I am free to resume my daily life. Also, I am sick of living with you.
And I want my sofa back.

The Hilarious World of Depression

Right now the entire world is dealing with the impact of isolation. Uncertainty. 

For some of us, this is nothing new. We are familiar with the monster that hides in our minds. The ominous sense of 

impending doom is not new. Most of us have spent our lives keeping it at bay. Living in dread of that moment it resurfaces. 

And now the rest of you know what that’s like, too. Welcome to the club. 

We each have our own favorite go to coping mechanisms. Mantras. Mine is This Too Shall Pass. Usually combined with some deep breathing and meditation, it works. 

It’s not working this time because I don’t know if - when - ever - this will pass. I don’t know what life will look like when it does. When we emerge from our Covid Caves, what will life be? Nobody has the answer. My second favorite go to is laughter. And that leads me to the point of this. I stumbled across a podcast that made me laugh. Belly laugh. In the midst of my morning commute on dark desolate roads I snorted my coffee.  It felt good. Do yourself a favor and listen to The Hilarious World of Depression. 

You’re welcome.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hilarious-world-of-depression/id1181589175?i=1000473521045

Symptoms

Since packing my bikini and moving east 

I’ve gained weight. Lots of weight. Which means a lot of my stuff doesn’t fit anymore. Now, I hate shopping on a good day, but when you’re uncomfortable in your own skin it’s torture. So when I finally broke down and decided to replace stuff, I did it in the privacy of my bedroom while eating ice cream. Yes. I amazoned it. All the things. Of course, I misjudged the sizing, because obviously we can’t standardize sizes or anything (seriously) and so I ended up with all sorts of issues. Too big, too small, too long. 

I wasn’t about to return things and start over. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to go real shopping.

My biggest concern was the situation with my boobs, which had taken on a larger than life persona. What I really needed was a new bra but ... no. Just no.

After much googling, I decided to address the issue by using something called body tape, which is basically four inch wide duct tape that holds all the fluffy stuff where it goes. In order to be effective it has to be applied tight. Very tight. 

It was Saturday. I had nothing but time on my hands except for an appointment to do my hair. Easy peasy. (I am a prolific problem solver.) I got halfway into the process and my phone rang. Shit. It was a work call. I shouldered on my shirt and answered, one-boobed. 

Once I got off the call I realized I was late for my hair appointment. I threw the rest of my clothes on and ran out the door, forgetting I was half-taped.

The hair appointment was uncomfortable. Finally she was finished, and I decide to run by Whole Foods to grab a few groceries. In the granola aisle I started feeling short of breath. My whole left side was tight. And sore. And swollen. 

I had a bulky flannel on and a jacket, so I attributed my discomfort to layers of clothes binding. I made it to the truck and climbed in, out of breath. All the way home, I kept adjusting my seatbelt. 

Finally I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I had a real problem. 

At every red light I frantically googled the medical reasons for my symptoms. Yikes. I googled doctors. I began planning a series of tests. More appointments.

I researched specialists. 

I got home and unloaded the groceries, the weight of worry really dragging me down. I decided to lay on the bed and palpate to see if there was a lump.

Jacket off.

Shirt unbuttoned.

Lay down.

Bra off.

Tape.

One boob was taped all the frickin way under my arm.

I can’t make this up, guys. 

Anybody want the rest of the tape?

Last Words

I’m that woman in the car next to you at the stop sign.

I didn’t pull forward immediately and you honked to let me know you were waiting on me. 

I get it.

We’re all on a schedule, some tighter than others. Some less forgiving. I get it.

You drive by and I note the ear thingie. Blue tooth.

When I was born, the phones were big and black and heavy. They were fixed to the wall. There was no call waiting or forwarding or voicemail.

Just plain old ring ring party line.

My dad is going to die. 

I am going to lose my father. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow.

You’re sitting next to me in your army ranger uniform and you fidget your wedding ring with your thumb. Whatever you’re thinking, be thankful. Be thankful you’re going home to a spouse. Be thankful.

You called me this morning and I was a little bit scatter brained and you sighed. I know. I wasn’t on point. I wasn’t super sharp. I hesitated.

I’m in a hotel room on an island 4000 miles away from my kids.

And my dad...

I left him a message this morning. I love you, Dad. It might be the last words he hears me say. 

You know what? Whatever you said to your dad or your spouse or your kid last....those might be the last words they hear you say. Make them count.

And one more thing...

Look at the person next to you. You don’t know. You just don’t know what they’re dealing with. 

Be kind. Smile. We are all just one breath away from forever.

We Were Supposed To Grow Old Together

Driving around the north shore of Oahu today, I couldn’t help but note the dichotomy of the scenery, with jagged mountains vaulting into the sky, piercing the clouds on one side and the ocean foaming and clawing at their base on the other. In between, in the middle of a mighty battle, the highway meandered naively through bohemian villages filled with architecture that never left the 60’s. Tiny huts nestled alongside billionaire’s estates without a care.

There was a time I would have envied the money. I would have felt the unfairness of being born without a silver spoon. 
But not today. 
Today I envy the huts. 
Not so much the homes but what I imagined behind the peeling paint of the walls. 

The husbands and wives who have grown old alongside one another: couples who don’t notice the wrinkles or the grey hair because it happened slowly and alongside a lifetime of memories.

I envied that.

I wanted that.

I was supposed to grow old with my lover who called me by a pet name and knew how I liked my coffee and never left me in care of the keys.

Those couples in the hut - they have something that is beyond value. They have something priceless. 

And yes. Today I envied them. I envied the hell out of them.

Aloha

  

Aloha.

Hello and Goodbye, all at the same time.  

I ought to be good at it by now. God knows I’ve had enough experience...

And yet, saying goodbye is still so fucking hard. Too hard.

Damn.

Today I start my Aloha tour, touching base with the places and people who have meant so much to me these last few years. 

Places and people who have changed me.

For the better I hope.

Places I’ll never see again.

People. 

Sigh. Damn again.

Sitting in the airport, I can’t help but think of five years ago when I arrived on island wearing a sweater and jeans and boots and make up and all the things I haven’t worn since that day.

I was wrapped up so tight. 

So uptight. 

I didn’t know how to laugh or play or relax. 

Hawai’i has taught me those things. 

Lying on the beach beneath a gentle sky with the sand warm beneath my skin... feeling the ocean tide pulling away my stresses, I was changed. I am changed.

I belong here now. In some strange way, I will always belong here.

And like every other time I have fallen in love, I’m leaving it behind.

And some people wonder why i am the way I am.

This.

This is why.

A lifetime of saying goodbye is why.

Damn.

The More Things Change ...

Hi again. I used this blog throughout the transition from married to divorced to single to ... me. And I used it again through my transition from the working girl to career woman. I never thought I would come back to this place, but here I am.
I’m transitioning again and I’m so not comfortable with it.
I’m also a little bit bereft I guess.  I lost my best friend and that loss definitely left a mark. But that’s a tale for another time.
Ahh.
Like so many times before, I’m jumping off into the great unknown. Except this time it is an unknown that I actually know a little bit about. I know there will be religion. And winter. And traffic and cities and people and all the things I left behind.
Wish me luck.
I’m going to need it.

Roots

 

Excerpted Fiction

 

Father was hard and cold and meaner than a snake during shedding season and I cannot remember a time when I did not hate him. In days to come I would forget his face but his hands would remain stuck in my mind like a splinter, those big, thick squares of leather, calloused and stained with tobacco, nails chipped and curled under on the corners like talons.

Right now they were clamped on the reins, the four long straps of leather squeezing through his fingers the way the mud down on French Creek squeezed between the toes of my bare feet after a hard rain. The mules, Big Jack and Little Jack, were laying hard against a juniper stump; though I suspected even with their simple way of thinking they knew it wasn’t going nowhere. It was a stubborn thing, the stump, and big—bigger than me—with roots that probably twisted down a hundred years or more, gnarling underground between chunks of solid stone. I imagined the roots like arms and hands and fingers, all holding on for dear life and I was torn between secretly hoping they would never let go and just wanting it to all be over.

The mules eased up and the reins dipped with slack. Sweat dripped from their bellies, their flanks, their eyelashes. It ran in rivers down their legs, pooling beneath the hairy fetlocks and darkening their hooves in stripes. Their nostrils flared like bellows. We’d been clearing all day without so much as a drop of water and it was pure awful hot—the kind of hot you can only feel in the bottom of a canyon in August under a big fat New Mexico sun. The kind of hot that makes your brains soft and your eyes blurry. The kind of hot that makes a body think crazy thoughts.

Father grunted a curse and both Jacks flinched, trembling in their harness, rat-tails clamped tight to their hind ends, mealy muzzles pursed into beaks of fear. I watched the golden arc of their flanks quiver; saw the half moon of terror rise in their eyes as they anticipated the sharp bite of Father’s whip and I found myself wishing Big Jack would nail my father in the chin with one of his plate-sized hooves. I measured the distance in my mind. Yep, a good kick would knock his head clean off his body and then some.

“Hyaw.” Like gravel, Father’s voice scraped across my ears followed quick-like with a pop of his whip. My insides jumped. I looked across at my sister, but she cut her eyes away. She was different now, all filled with secrets and lots of stuff I didn’t know and couldn’t do anything about anyway. I was learning that sometimes it was best if you just didn’t know such things at all.

The jacks dug in again, haunches hunkered deep, necks bowed. Leather strained. Hooves grated into the rocky soil. Again and again, the same thing, until I had to bite my lips to keep from shouting out, had to twist my hands into fists to keep from yanking the reins out of Father’s hands, to turn and use them on him, to tell him I’d like to see him pull a tree out of the ground roots and all.

And then, just as suddenly as the crazy thoughts had come upon me, they were gone. With a pop and groan, the stump broke free and the mules let up and I was mighty glad I hadn’t done any of the things I’d been thinking on.

“Ho,” Father barked. Both Jacks froze in place, ears flopping back and forth. One of Big Jack’s legs still trembled in mid air. Maybe it was from the effort, maybe relief, but I knew better. He trembled cause he was scared. Scared he didn’t do it good enough or fast enough or right enough to please Father. I knew that feeling: I knew it well. We lived in it, my ma and my sister and me. We didn’t talk about it, not ever, so I don’t know how they dealt with their fears, but as for me, I hid. During the day, I hid in plain sight by working hard and being quiet and doing what I was supposed to be doing all the time. But at night it wasn’t so easy. At night I snuck out to the barn to see the mules and also so I wouldn’t have to hear things I didn’t want to hear and it seemed like they understood why I was there. I told them they were good. I told them they were the biggest, best pair of mules in Territory and I wouldn’t trade nothing for them. Nothing.

“Git yer heads out of the clouds and get that cleaned up.”

We jumped and hurried to the stump right fast, me hacking away at the clumpy roots with my axe, my sister dragging the loose stubble to the side to be burned. How I didn’t chop her hands clean off, I don’t know. Never thought about it til later. Father said to do it and we did it. We did whatever Father said.

Whatever he said, just the way he said, or we paid the price.

And sometimes, we paid anyway. Especially my sister.

Jigging at the Bit

I’m breaking up with Vegas.

These days I walk a fine line; a fine line I tell you. I go about my daily business as usual, but just beneath the surface boils an eager anticipation of the future. It isn’t bad, but it is distracting. It’s a willingness, a hunger, a craving for change that leaves me restless at night.

I recognize it from my other life.

It’s the heart racing power of 1200 pounds of muscle between your knees, sidling, prancing, snorting in frustration. Head tossing. Mouthing the steel – testing the tension on the reins. Asking when, when, when can we go…

I used to be the one holding the reins which was kind of fun, but now I am the one jigging at the bit. And it is Not Fun.
If you just showed up in this story, let me give you the rearview mirror version.

For twenty eight years I was a rancher. That went to hell in a hand basket and I hit the road with a new job. I fell into Sin City working a mine site about two years ago and so help me God, I’ve been hunting a way out ever since. Not that I don’t like my job (although for a while there it was touch and go). Not that I don’t have nice digs, or plenty of food. Not that my needs aren’t met here. More than met. Exceeded.

I just don’t belong.

I am a straggly mutt that strayed into the Kennel Club and can’t find the exit. I’m the homeless man outside the Casino. The prostitute in church. Like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, I have learned the jargon, the fashion, the ways of the city… but I open my mouth and the world around me jars to a halt.

It is City Mouse meets Country Mouse and I am the Country Mouse.

I don’t know what’s next for me and that is kind of making me crazy, I admit. I know I’m not going to be transferred to the outback. I know they won’t send me to the Middle of Nowhere. But wherever it is, it won’t be here and that’s okay with me.

I’m through with silicone breasts and tummy tucks and acrylic nails and hair extensions and men that look like women and women that look like skeletons. Don’t get me wrong – what happened in Vegas won’t stay here. Someday I’ll share the stories. But right now, I can’t.  I’m too ready to move on. Move forward. I’m ready to be anywhere but here.

That worries me for about a million reasons I can't explain, but if you're a horseman, you already know.
To put it plainly, I'm jigging at the bit. And that, my friend, is a bad habit. A waste of time that gets you nowhere and does not always end well... for the bit-jigger.

On Seeking Purpose and Not Finding It

I’ve been thinking a lot about purpose lately. About how we all have one. About how maybe we live it out, in spite of our mistakes and our best intentions.  In spite of ourselves.

About how we are all chosen for a purpose … and how we foolishly think we have a say in how everything is going to play out.

About Why.

And as usual, the hazy chaos of my thoughts finally settle like dust and find truth in the familiarity of a corral.

The gate fell open with a creak and the metallic chime of chain against pipe. All heads raised at the sound, ears swiveling inquisitively toward the source.  A lanky sorrel with a crooked blaze took one shuffling step forward to greet me. I slid my hand under his chin, up around the strong curve of his jaw to his ears. He nuzzled my shoulder affectionately. I ruffled his mane and ran my hand along his back but passed him by.  He was a good horse – had a nice smooth trot that covered the distance without reorganizing your organs, but a little bit clumsy at times. Definitely not suited for the job at hand. 

Next to meet me was the stocky roan. This bad boy had a chest deep enough to drive a Mac truck through.  He was my first choice for pen work but his hooves were soft. Even with shoes, it would be unkind to take him up the canyon. Maybe even a little dangerous – nobody wanted to take a spill onto a solid sheet of rock and I sure didn't want to take the chance of hurting him. So, I passed him by with a pat on his butt.

I needed a specific horse today because I had a specific purpose.

I found him standing quietly in the corner, hip cocked, head down, eyes deliberately averted, pretending he was not The One. A black tipped ear tracked my approach and at the last moment he took a step to the side in a half-hearted attempt to escape. An unspoken disapproval was exchanged and he halted, turned to face me, let me slip the rope under his jaw and around his neck.

To anyone watching it would appear the choice was random. In reality, it was anything but. I knew the bay: knew he had a trot like a jackhammer and could be stubborn. I also knew his hooves were like iron and he was sure footed as a mule. It might not be fun, but he would finish the job.

Though our lives may appear to be random, I don’t believe they are.  Just as the bay didn't choose me that day, the Bible says we did not choose God.  God chose us for reasons known only to Him. He knows things about us that even we don’t know.  He knows our strengths.  He knows our abilities.  More important: he knows the job that needs to be done and selects us with that specific purpose in mind. 

There are so many things I don’t understand. Why am I alone at this stage in my life? Why do have this sudden exchange of people I interact with daily? Why do none of them speak the languages in which I am fluent – Horse, Ranch, Art? What is my purpose in this place that is so very foreign to me?

I mull over this particular quandary a lot. On the drive to work. On the drive home. On weekends, when I hide in my apartment because I'm weary of the very strangeness of my life. I am like a dog, turning in circles, trying to find a place to rest. In the end, I have to admit – I have no clue. I simply don’t know. I can't know. I'm not equipped. That’s the point where faith comes in, I think.  Faith in something bigger, something smarter: I thank God for that faith because it is the only thing that gives me rest. 
And like that bay, when I feel his approach in the dusty corral I can turn away and try to escape or I can stop, turn, let Him slip that rope halter around my neck and follow him into the next great adventure.

In the words of Rich Mullins - I can’t see how you’re leading me unless you’ve led me here. Where I’m lost enough to let myself be led… and so you’ve been here all along I guess. It’s just your way. And you are just plain hard to get.