Meandering...

I really despise people who are whiners.  Oh poor me, I don't have this, blah blah blah.  Today, I feel like screaming to the top of my lungs about how I feel.  I normally envision punching people like this in the eye.  It is as though Satan has a shiny button that he is apparently allowed to push to shuffle my universe until some days, I cannot breathe without willing myself to consciously take a breath in, then out, then in.  In the big picture, the things that have me rattled probably are as inconsequential as the wind on a calm day, but still, today, this is where I lie.  What I want is to let it roll off of my back.  Oh how I long for duck feathers.  

Several years ago, I was in such a deep, dark place, under the ocean with barely any light visible.  The air hose was long and I drifted further into the abyss.  On good days, when the sun was bright, I could make out its reflection through the water, as my heart and soul became covered in barnacles and sea weed, the sludge that is better off below.  Recently, I am so close to the top that I can poke my fingers out, breaking the sea from the underside, remembering what the sun feels like on my skin.  My head would re-emerge, gasping in air, real oxygen, inflating my lungs with a hunger for life back on dry land. Last year, I was breaking with the waves, riding them into the shore and wading my way back out of the water.  Once, I even touched the dry sand, running my fingers through like a Zen garden of tranquility, but I couldn't hold on to that which blew through my fingers.  Recently, and especially today, the undertow is churning and its strength may be more than I can handle.  When will be the last time that it completely sucks me under, into oblivion, captive and hopeless to continue fighting something as big as the sea.  I am not Daniel, David, or even Nemo. 



With so much important work to be done in the world, this is where I am- stuck.  Why can't I just move someplace where kids actually want to learn something and the work and gifts that I have are valued.  Day in and day out, the ungrateful apathetic shells of materialistic by-products, also know as middle schoolers, suck my enthusiasm for teaching away.  My life's work is made into mockery every single day by people who should know better. 

The burden of decision plunging deep into my stomach.  Do all of my decisions have to be so wrong, so consequential?  I want nothing from anyone in this world, but to be free, emancipated.  I feel that no matter what I decide, whether it is what to have for dinner or which bill collector to pay, the lashes will just keep striking me on raw skin.   I have always been a up by your own bootstraps kind of women, relentless to keep plugging on and away.  Has all that has been sacrificed even been worth it to ANYONE?  And still, I can't breathe...

The dreams that I had for myself are all but a faint memory, lost to the impulsiveness and youth of a few bad decisions. I just want to find some solitude and contentment.  Unfortunately, wherever I run, these thoughts still haunt me.  So for now, I am meandering...hoping for something more.  It is a selfish notion, filled with none of the contemplative resolve that I usually have an endless supply of, but yet, here I am.