Friday, January 11, 2008

What Do You Do?

What do you do when you've been so busy twirling inside the insanity of your little world that when you look up long enough to go to a friend's party to go help and they feel the need to change when you get there because "people are here" when before you weren't "people" at all?

What do you do when you look at a calender and admit that you are much older than you feel and literally all of your friends from high school now are nestled comfortably in 401Ks and SUVs?

What do you do when you just needed a job to get through school but you blinked and now you're a partner with the firm with your own key and alarm code and you're still looking for a better job almost every week?

What do you do when you realize you find yourself looking at your daily task list and prefer to do dishes over your supposedly glamorous and high tech work assignment that honestly bores you to new levels of oblivion?

What do you do when you see that glassy look of recognition and anxiety in a friends eye that you know has gotten an earful of gossip and you know by whom and the only thing you want to do is call it out and refute it but at the same time don't want to give any kind of attention to trite and mean spirited matters because they just canker whatever relationship they touch. So you just sit there, knowing that someone else has made you out to be "people" to someone you love and all you can do is hope in their better judgment but still keenly feel a loss and injustice?

What do you do when you feel the only person that truly knows you is someone you can never love?

What do you do when the only people that you have ever really loved haven't ever really known you?

What do you do when you find yourself finding emotional refuge in Children's Literature sections of bookstores and the fragrance section at Sephora because you feel pretty beaten up everywhere else you go?

What if the only thing you can see is where you've failed and how far you haven't come and then you feel guilty for not being properly grateful and pious for celebrating the distance you have come and the things you have achieved (cause there are a notable few) so you just end up coming up short all the way around.

What do you do when you inventory your list of worries and the only thing that comes to mind is your friend's father in surgery from a rolled over car accident or your friend's rocky marriage across the country or your little brother sitting in the MTC with a plane ticket in hand just hours away from jumping into the big, mean, scary, violent, gun toting world with a name tag, a testimony, and a luggage set to his name?

You pray and promptly put yourself to bed.

2 comments:

Nicole said...

Wow...that sure is a lot to think about! I tend to have similar levels of worry and questions before I go to bed pretty often. But HF has put you in this place and this time for a reason. You are given the trials and questions that He knows you can handle. But I sure am glad that I've got reservations to see you next weekend (as long as my dad's condition improves enough that my mom isn't freaking out) I'll call today.

Liz the Poet said...

I could relate with a couple of your thoughts.

Isn't it interesting how fast our thinking minds can get swamped?

Good thing we have an eternal perspective, or we would all become immoble and sit in stupors.