Oh, it's her again.

For the last year I’ve been dealing with eye issues.  Double vision.  Blurriness.  No one really knows what is going on.  Eye doctor, specialist and now this Friday I’ll see another specialist.  I want an answer.

The moment I said it, I wanted to reach out into the air and pull back the breath that pushed it towards your ears.

The moment I said it, I wished it away.

I think about you so many times during the day.  While walking down the hallway and out of the corner of my eye I see a man who resembles you and my heart skips a beat and I have a momentary hope that it’s really you, only to look into the eyes of a man that I don’t know.  I expect you to fall in beside me, our steps echoing each other, our banter  playing tag in the air as it swirls and churns with burst of intermittent laughter.

But the only thing walking beside me is your memory.  A shadow that needs neither explanation or sunlight to create.  A shadow that clicks on my heels and makes me fumble just at the very moment I think that I’m strong enough to walk forward.  You never catch me though.  I fall, sprawled on the pavement, starring at the blue sky, and screaming in my head “Why does it linger?”

It lingers because we need it to.  We need to feel raw, hallow and raped of normal emotions.  Our world has been turned up side down, and in the upside down world, things are never what it used to be.  It lingers to remind us the love.  The dreams.  The hopes.  It lingers to give us the opportunity to sear into our brains every single memory that was important.   The stronger we feel the pain, the deeper the memories will burn into our souls.

It lingers so that we don’t forget.

But sometimes you get what you need.

I’m old now.  Long gone are the days where I cared about about what my classmates thought of me.  Long gone are the days of rebellion and anger.  Long gone are the hopes, desires, wishes, dreams.  Old is old and you can’t ever go backwards and redo what you’ve done wrong.  I’m old now.  The wrinkles crinkle at the corner of my eyes.  My face grows tired and my walk grows slower.

Today we were driving down the road when my 4 year old launched into a discussion about God.

Mommy, who makes the rain clouds?

God.

Is God a giant?

No honey.  He lives in heaven.

Does he have a car?

I’m sure he does.

Is it a cloud car?

Yes.

Or he could walk.

Are there sidewalks?

Yes.

Mommy, is there a ladder?

In heaven?

No, to climb up to heaven.

I love my life.  I hate death talks.  I always get stuck with them.  Always.  I hate them.  They give me panic attacks.  I don’t want to talk about them.  But the kids always pin me into a corner to talk about them.

I say that word a lot.  Just breath.  Just close your eyes for a minute and just breath.  Yes, you’ve heard your son say “mommy” 4,000,000 times in one day.  Yes, you have been their maid and gotten very few thank you’s in return.  Yes, you are running a business that is taking every ounce of creative energy right out of your sole.  Just breath because it will.  It has to.  Get better.

We have a huge project going on right now.  It’s brand new for the business and it’s exciting and tedious and a lot of work, but I’m so excited.  I so want to hole myself up in a hotel room, plug in Pandora and turn it up, plug myself into the computer and totally pump out all the information that keeps whirling around in my head.  This is what I live for.  The passion.  I’ll be honest.  It’s been missing from me for a while where the business is concerned.  In fact, this month was suppose to be the month where I was suppose to move onto greener pastures.  However, I believe in fate, and karma and what you deserve is delivered even if it’s not necessarily what you thought it was going to be.  Like that song “You can’t always get what you want, but along the way, you may get what you need.”   I know that this is what I was suppose to be doing and I’m okay with how it turned out.  It’s just not what I was expecting a year ago.

Now, just to breath for a little bit and collect it all into a baggy so I can peer at it for a little bit and try to put into nice little columns that make sense!

Waterdop 3-10-11 a photo by Stacy Carlson on Flickr.

I’ve been critiqued on my waterdrops saying that the drop should be vertical, but I’m just captivated by the angle of this photo and it’s perhaps my favorite one.