Friday, July 30, 2010

Blindside

Sometimes it's better to be blindsided. It's a little easier to take that leap when you don't exactly see it coming, and maybe, sometimes taking little steps is okay, too.

Or maybe it's just better when you can't see the bottom of what you're leaping over.

I said last time that people have baggage. And there are people we have with us that help us carry it, and help us sort through it and not just pitch it off the pier. There are those people who stand by you even when things start flying, and you're not quite sure which way is up, and which is way is the right side, and which way gets you the hell out of everything. You find out who your friends are, and you find out, really, a little more what love is kind of like.

In a way.

There's something to be said for finding out that someone sticks around just for you. It's humbling. That they stay because not only are you able to deal with their shit as well as your own, they're always a listening ear. They don't let you get away with lying to yourself (or to them) and know just the right amount of push, back off, listen, and speak to be effective.

And no matter what dumbass thing you've done, they're still here.

If it's a boy, and you're a girl, there's this little chance. I'm not classifying it under those famous four letters. It's too early for that. But there's been so much between the two - baggage from both sides, failures and triumphs from both sides, and I have mentioned baggage? One's got a matching Gucci set and the other mismatched, threadbare lumpy stuff.

And then comes the moment of truth. Try it? One's more than a little gunshy, and the other, as always, has the promise that come hell or high water, I won't hurt you because I've seen you hurt enough. I've dealt with the fallout from the other hurts. Do you trust it? Do you trust yourself?

What happens is that you go slow. You start something that's a little new, a little foreign to the both of you, and see where it goes. And as long as your happy, and you're safe, nobody else should really give a damn. Don't give it a name - a label - just let it be. See where it goes. It'll take shape of its own.

Just that first step though - that's the hardest, and it's a damn doozy. Make sure you bring your flashlight and an open mind.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Human

As much as we may not like to admit it - and I've touched on this before - we're human. Therefore, we're mortal.

We're not bulletproof.

We've not hearts made of stone (though, some may try to say otherwise) and when we feel, we feel deeply, madly, and without consent. When we hurt, we cry. If we don't, sometimes it's much worse that shaking a soda bottle and waiting for the top to explode off because it can't handle the pressure built inside. That's the way we are, the way we're built.

The past couple of weeks have been...interesting. There were some liquor bottles stolen from work - nobody's been arrested, though an accusation was made - and that accusation came down on a friend of mine who, while he's a little rough around the edges, has a good heart. Sees the world a little differently, but is a good person (I'd like to think I don't stay too long around the ones who aren't). This whole incident couldn't have come at a worse time for him - one of his good friends and classmates (one of my old high school classmates, too) committed suicide last week. At the age of twenty, the day after his birthday.

Now, everyone has baggage. I'd like to think that I've managed to get mine down to a carry-on sized bag covered in blue plaid, but there are some people I know that have an entire set - slightly mismatched in pattern - that they tote with them because they're not ready to let go, or they can't yet, because they're not done collecting. They're not ready to really start processing through it, or they haven't met someone to make them go through it. Force them to look at it, examine it, and sort out what should/could/might have been a better choice and what things weren't anybody's fault, and just those things that life likes to chuck out on a regular basis to see how you deal. Those little tests, those moments when I remember my sister's words to me: God will only give you what you can handle - no more, no less.

Not everybody handles it the same way.

And sometimes it's enough to bring a charismatic, flamboyount young man down a couple of pegs to where he feels he's not bulletproof anymore. Where's he's hittable, sinkable, and slogging through the undergrowth without something to hack at it. As a friend, watching him at the moment, and hoping that he keeps a job that he's had for four years and that he keeps everything together, I don't know what to do to help him find that thing to hack at the undergrowth. Or to find him a cart for his baggage.

What I do know is that I'm not the person he needs to sit down and go through it with him. I can't offer to do that with him, because it's not me that he needs in that capacity. I have a different purpose. I need to show him that yes, the light at the end of the tunnel might be the uncoming train - a la Murphy - but it also might be only what it looks like. A light at the end of a tunnel. A way out. And you just chug through and hope for the best. You do the best you can with what you have to work with. You ignore what you can until, well, you can't really ignore it anymore, and then you man up, sit down, open your baggage and sort through all the dirty laundry you've been neglecting since you can remember. It's painful, it stinks, and it's absolutely disgusting in some places, but it's utterly necessary. You file things away, you hold onto what you need to - even if you think you don't want to - and you remember that hey, you lived through it once, and you can do it again. You remember the people that have helped you along the way, whether they hefted a suitcase for you, or they pointed you in the direction you needed to go.

You smile, say thank you, and you plod through your own way because you grow. You find a little more of yourself you didn't know you had. You're a little wiser, a little more with it. Not quite as bulletproof as you once were, but we're all human.

And that just might be the most important thing to remember.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Multi-Use

Well, at least somebody's getting some use out of the Vera normally put to use toting the laptop hither and yon.

Fish Belly White

Yesterday, after cleaning the boat for two and a half hours, a few of my coworkers and I had the brilliant idea to jump in the lake after we got done because it was hot. It was one of those things that, yeah, you mention it, and you think, okay, maybe, we'll see, and we were actually traipsing out along the pier toward the little shack thing that sits on the end before you get to the breakwater, and I was like, oh, shit, well, okay...

For the first time in my life I jumped off the Village Pier. In a sports bra, compression shorts, and my favorite baby blue Adidas shorts (a random here, have these from my sister a few years ago) in front of tourists and the four people that I work with - including two boys. While my shoulders and my upper body and lower legs might be tan, my tummy is an extremely attractive shade of fish belly white.

Which, incidentally, as I was sitting on the railing looking at the green-blue water and thinking, damn it, this is pretty high, not once did it really cross my mind that my hips might not look all that attractive or that somebody might think I was a little on pudgy side.

Okay, well, it did for a little bit - until Bones said, "I'll peel left and you peel right" from his position on the railing to my immediate left. And then he dove in and what else was I supposed to do but jump? And it felt awesome. Not just the jumping off the pier itself into the fairly deep water of the marina (which isn't like jumping off the boat house dock at school, because you'll hit bottom there - at the pier, toward the end of it, you'll jump from a good ten feet up and go down, and there's water above and below you).

Apart from the fact that it might have been more than slightly illegal (but everybody does it anyway, especially on the hot days), it was really oddly freeing. Like when Todd chucks the desk set off the wall during Dead Poets Society.

And I was sitting next to Bones and yeah, there was some initial butterflies, mostly dealing with oh, God, my hips, belly...dear Lord, can he see where my scar is from my surgery? and then it was like, whatever. And with Bre on my right, with hips like mine in jeans and a regular bra, both of us on the railing... it was a freedom.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I was really freaking out all that much about being half-naked in front of a bunch of tourists. Tattoo, hips, and fish-belly white belly. And it didn't matter, at that moment, what anybody else thought.

Which, come to think of it, is a crazy way to live, isn't it?

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Things to Know XIII

- I'm setting records at work that you probably shouldn't be proud of - such as how to get stiffed on a tip two Saturdays in a row when people drop $45 a plate.

- Em is coming to visit in August.

- I'm almost as excited about Em coming to visit as I am about leaving for Wales.

- Well...almost but not quite.

- My plane departs in 63 days.

- My sister has been carrying my Focus back and forth to work with her nearly every day. This may pose a problem later.

- I've been a bad - incredibly bad, actually - blogger lately. But not really sure how to fix it.

- I've got tan lines. Rather normal-looking tan lines, but still. Tan lines.

- I have yet to go swimming this summer.

- For the first time in my life, I hit overtime at my job (41.91 hours).

- Does the previous qualify me as a workaholic at the tender age of twenty?

- My Facebook status is a set of Matchbox Twenty lyrics because not much has happened recently.

- I look fairly fat in the dress I wore at my cousins wedding last month. Or, at least you can clearly see the chin fat. Which is rather unflattering.

- I had mac and cheese for the first time in months today, because it was made with special pasta since dad has this thing about eating "burnt pasta" and this stuff resembles regular pasta.

- Course selections for abroad are due not later than August 1.

- I am so excited!

- Tomorrow night is the Teen Cruise. Not so excited.

- Teen Cruise is hours. No tips. Just hours.

- Lately, it's been more like "fall down go boom" than "crawl into bed and sleep."

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Still Kickin'

This appropriately says it all.

HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 who are you again? My sister used to tweet under this twitter ID, but she's been strangely absent lately from here and her blog

Said sister has been, well, a workaholic for the past week and a half.

Not quite a regular 9-5, but still enough to put 37 hours for a week. Makes for one hell of a paycheck. I don't mind working - I like my job. Sure, the heat is a little more than bearable when you're doing nothing at home besides reading borrowed library books, and running up and down the stairs of a moving boat doesn't look all that appealing to anyone with more than a little bit of logical reasoning capabilities, but it's the job that I have, and the job that I will do.

I just drink 64-96 ounces of water a day as a result. More than half of that while I'm at work.

Another thing that hasn't helped both the blog and new installments of Murphy, has been this:

HaBryerton:@MollyLouise10 does that mean I should stop strapping him into the car seat & taking him to work with me? It likes the office AC [Regards to my missing Focus.]

[Side note: I'm watching Robin Hood (the BBC version) and Djaq is basically telling Will Scarlet that she loves him and I cannot handle this, and it reminds me how much I love this show. Though my favorite is and probably always will be (other than Will and Robin) Allan a Dale.]

I am so sweaty and disgusting that it's gross, even for me.

Keeping with the Robin Hood theme, the new movie? You must see it. Absolutely have to, because it's very reminiscent of one of the best series of books that I've read in quite a while. Stephen R. Lawhead took the legendary tale of Robin Hood out of Sherwood Forest in England, and dropped him into Wales. Gave the story a unique twist, and made it one hell of an interesting read that I chewed through in little under a week last year while in Martha's Vineyard. There's three books in the series - Hood, Scarlet, and Tuck. I strongly recommend you read them. All of them.

In an update about things happening across the pond - or trying to get there - the visa application processing center received my application. And I'll get it back (or have to send more information) sometime between the next two to twelve weeks. Hopefully it'll be along the lines of two.

And we're down to 66 days before I depart on a plane for three months across the Atlantic in a tiny town in Wales.

I'm doing that odd combination of crying and laughing because I can't believe that it's almost here. Less than, what? Three months? Two months? Sixty-six days. Sixty-six days before I pack up, get in the car with mom and dad, take a drive to the city, and go through airport security and stand there before that final barrier until I can give them one last hug and go through that last checkpoint. Sit there by the gate and wait with no phone for the plane, hope to find people that I'm going abroad with, and start to build something incredible.

When you think about it that way, it stirs something powerful and unidentifiable within you. Something that you're excited about, and scared of at the same time.

[Side note: Those Jillian Michaels commercials - nobody looks that freakin' good when they get done with a serious workout. Their hair is not down in perfect curls and they are definitely not smiling to that degree. It's more like a grimace because your muscles don't want to work properly. Or that could just be me and everybody else after Ralph gets through with us...]

Probably not the type of post that you were hoping or thinking you'd see from me, so I'll end with something a little out of the ordinary. The stuff that I'm currently reading for fun, most of it borrowed from the library.

Rising Phoenix, by Kyle Mills
The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman
Ramage, by Dudley Pope
Byzantium, by Stephen R. Lawhead
"The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't."

-Joseph L. Mankiewicz