Recently, Sunshine and I went to the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex to visit a friend of ours. Normally, when we go visit our friend, we stay at our friend’s house. This time, when we texted our friend that we were getting near, he texted back an address and told us to meet him there. We got there, and it was a hotel. See, our friend’s house was on the market, staged and ready for an open house early the next morning and he didn’t want us to have to feel rushed to leave, so he put us up in a hotel.
Now, our friend is one of those “go big or go home” kind of people. Well, maybe “live life out loud” or “live life at high speed” or something would be more like it, but whatever–the point is, our friend believes in living life to the fullest. And because he knows that we live in a tiny house on wheels, he couldn’t just get us a hotel room. He had to go and get us a suite, with a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom that on its own was bigger than our whole living room, kitchen and dining area combined. The living room and bedroom each had one entire wall made up of windows overlooking the city to the south, and to a city girl like me, the view was stunning.
Sunshine, our dog Mollie, and our friend took off to do whatever it is they do when they hang out–probably fossil hunting or some other grand adventure. I went shopping, as my ass has grown too big for my pants or my pants have shrunken too small for my backside, and there are just so many good stores in the DFW metroplex.
I got done shopping (in a surprisingly short amount of time) and returned to the hotel. After taking my purchases out of their bags and packing them in my luggage, I surveyed the living room area of our suite. There was this cute little armchair right in front of the window, but it was facing the wrong way, so I turned it around and plopped my ass down facing that wall of windows, and I watched the world go by from my perch on the eighth floor of this hotel.
There has always been something so soothing to me about watching the world from high up in a building in the middle of a large city. Maybe it’s because I can watch the city go by without being affected by the hustle and bustle and mad rush and overwhelming NOISE of it all. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a large city and somehow wound up in a swamp and miss the hell out of city life. Maybe it’s a little of both with some unknown factors thrown in for good measure.
Whatever the reason, I sat there in that room and watched the world go by out that window and listened to the sound of the air whooshing through the vents of the air-conditioning system and the faint sound of the water in the fountain eight stories below me splashing on the concrete.
I sat there in that silence and watched the world go by, and felt such a deep peace.
That may not sound like much out of the ordinary to some of you, but to an addict like me, to sit alone and just watch the world out a window and enjoy the silence–well, that’s a miracle.
There were many years when I couldn’t be alone. There were many years when I couldn’t stand silence. There were many years when I always had somewhere to go and something to do and somebody to be.
I was able to sit there in that chair and watch the world go by and be content with just sitting still. I was happy to know that, unlike all of those people in all of those cars rushing by below me–I had nowhere to be, no pressures, no deadlines, no expectations to meet. I had only to sit and reflect in the silence.
I was able to sit there in the silence, with nothing to distract me from myself, and not want to crawl out of my skin.
After my addiction, failed marriages, prison time, and all of the other horrors that go along with addiction, it’s a miracle it is for me to be able to sit in silence and watch the world go by. It’s a miracle for me to sit high up in a hotel and watch humanity pass by without worrying that life is passing me by.
So my dose of happy this Monday is being able to enjoy the silence, to be comfortable in my own skin. I hope each and every one of you can find a few moments this week to enjoy some silence, and just be.
Good morning! It’s Monday again. Doesn’t it feel like Monday are always here? Seems like every seven days or so we have another one. Jeez…
But today we’re finding something to be happy about!
It’s been a rough week around here. I’m feeling stressed and anxious and downright grumpy.
But this week, the husband and I get to have some time by ourselves.
I’ve been anxious about a very impromptu trip to Memphis, but the closer it gets, the more excited I get.
Thursday we head to the birthplace of Rock & Roll. And even though I hate Elvis and don’t eat meat on bones, I’m pretty sure I’m going to love it there.
We’ll head home late Friday and then on Saturday, one of my best friends gets married in North Georgia. We get to dress up and have fun with old friends!
Now that’s something to be happy about this week, right?
************************** What’s your Happy?
Don’t think you have one? Look harder. Something will make you smile today.
Clear blue skies and the green of the trees made so sharp in the sunlight.
Curling up in my room with a good book.
Listening to my dad and step-mum when they come to visit, and seeing how happy they are.
Seeing my sister for the first time in months and being so proud of the amazing woman she’s becoming.
The silk-like feel of my cat’s fur.
Putting my ear to the ribs of my other cat when he’s purring and hearing it thunder around like an engine.
The first page of a new sketchbook – utterly terrifying, but thrilling too!
Crawling into my bed when I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.
Seeing an old couple holding hands.
My mother telling me she’s proud of me and cherishing that she can say that to me now, when all we used to do was fight.
A refreshing, cold drink on a hot day. The type that has so much condensation on the outside that you worry you might drop it every time you pick it up, so each sip is even more rewarding.
Feeling the cobbles under my feet as I walk down the main shopping street in my town.
Clear water and white sand. And fish. There must be fish.
Going a day in control of my eating disorder, not it controlling me.
************************** What’s your Happy?
Don’t think you have one? Look harder. Something will make you smile today.
That’s right – I know you’re reading this right now. This post is for those who come here to read stories, but haven’t submitted their own… yet.
(Before you start thinking, “this girl is nonsense, just let me read in peace,” hear me out, okay?)
When I first stumbled on to the Band Back Together site, I had massive steel walls up. Sharing anything that made me vulnerable was a HUGE no-no.
The devil on my shoulder told me that The Band was everything I didn’t deserve – supportive, honest people talking about REAL shit without fear. That stupid devil told me I had nothing to offer; no one could possibly relate to me. (Needless to say, those negative messages ran through all aspects of my life, not just about submitting a story here.)
So, I became a silent lurker.
Every single post led me to believe that I, in fact, was not alone. Life deals us all some horrendous, ugly crap.
Finally, I shoved that devil off my shoulder and decided to submit something.
The first moment I pressed submit, my heart fluttered with fear. Fear that I’d done something horribly wrong.
But you can probably figure out the rest of the story – nothing went wrong. In fact, it went truly, unbelievably RIGHT.
The Band told me I am brave, worthy of love, and not alone – three things that are incredibly hard, but important, to hear. In order to knock that devil off my shoulder for good, I needed to read those comments that were a direct response to writing I submitted.
As that devil lost his power, I had the urge to write about absolutely everything that was eating me up inside because I knew The Band would be there for me with unconditional support, hope, and virtual hugs. And, damn it feels so good to have that for the first time in my life.
Maybe you’re reading this right now and think:
–No one can relate to what I’m going through;
–My story isn’t worth reading; and/or
–I am not a good writer.
STOP. IT. RIGHT. NOW. All of those thoughts went through my mind, and let me tell you, NONE of it is true. That devil is trying to trick you, and you gotta FIGHT BACK.
You are 110% worth becoming part of The Band. It might be hard writing your first submission – in fact, it SHOULD be scary because you’re probably writing about something that you rarely talk about. But trust me: THIS is the place to do it. You owe it to yourself.
One of the weirder phobias I have–aside of my fear of tomatoes touching my food–is that I’m terrified of fish. I don’t mean that if I see an aquarium, I’m going to break out into a cold sweat and start crying, no, even I’m not THAT insane.
But since I can remember, my parents have been taking us to tropical places–I know, poor baby, right?–and along with tropical places = snorkeling.
When I was 4 or 5, my parents bravely took us to Mexico and in a stunning fit of idiocy on their part, they left my brother and I to swim alone while they leisurely relaxed in a cliff-type thing above us. Out of sight, out of mind, I think, was the idea. Having three kids of my own, I understand the urge. But I’m still unsure what the fuck they were thinking to leave a 14 year old in charge of a 4 year old in the ocean.
Because my brother promptly ditched me to go and strut his lack of muscles in front of a couple of bikini clad babes.
I could swim, though, so I just waded into the water.
What happened next has been replayed over and over in my mind for the next 24 years.
The fish, accustomed to friendly humans who might feed them delicious treaties, swarmed me. Since I wasn’t underwater myself, I couldn’t see their beautiful swirling colorful fins. Instead, I saw a bunch of black THINGS just swarm me.
I screamed so loudly that pretty much everyone at the beach–including my lazy parents– came running. Maybe they thought I’d been half eaten by a Jaws-like shark, or perhaps I caught sight of a fat hairy dude in a Speedo. Who knows.
All that I do know is that for years after this, I had to force myself to go into the ocean, shaking and terrified, every time we went on vacation. The fear would subside the moment I was under the crystal blue water, but up until that point, I’d be silently shaking in my swimsuit.
Our last family vacation happened in 2000. My brother–recovering from a nasty divorce and full-on taking every bad feeling out on me–was 30, I was 20. My parents made the grave error of leaving us alone to share a room where we fought like it was 1999.
This is likely WHY this was our last vacation as a family.
One of the days that we were there in Cozumel, we went to some renowned beach to get some snorkeling done and generally laze about the beach. By this age, I can assure you, I wasn’t upset that my parents didn’t watch me swim. In fact, I welcomed the opportunity to get the fuck away from everyone else and have some relative solitude in the waves.
I’m a decent swimmer, so once I got past the rocks and coral at the mouth of the beach–where, of course, in my normal good gracefulness, I fell and cut the shit out of my foot–I got pretty far away from the lip of the beach where I could get in and out of the water. This beach wasn’t really full of sand, you see. It was more the coral and other stuff that will cut a bitch (like me) up.
But I relished the soft whooshing of the ocean in my ears as I snorkeled about, following a family of yellow and blue fish around and trying to forget the hysterics of the morning. My brother had called me a worthless piece of shit for the 437th time that hour and I crumpled into a pile of tears outside of our villa. The 5,000 feral cats who’d been following me about swarmed me as I cried. It was strangely comforting.
It was wonderful to feel so free. There’s something so comforting about the soft lull of the waves, the ability to be a voyeur into another world, and after my initial fear, I am always reluctant to get out of the water.
Out of nowhere, as I was admiring a particularly delightful looking puffer fish, my body caught fire. I was electrified, my body searing in pain and I began to hyperventilate.
I popped my head above water to see if I’d run into some electrified fence (I was in pain and terrified. I know how dumb that sounds now), nothing. I forced my face down under the water to see what I’d obviously run into. If it were a school of jelly fish, then I’d do well to make sure to swim AWAY from it rather than into the swarm. Still, I could see nothing.
I swam choppily back toward shore, hyperventilating and panicking, now noticing just how fucking far away I was from the beach. I looked down at my arms and legs and saw with horror that I was now a mess of criss-crossed red welts, from my legs to my arms and my chest.
Finally, after what had to be at least two hours (read: 3 minutes), I grabbed hold of a ladder and hoisted myself shakily up to the beach. I sat at the edge of the cliff-type, surveying the damage and trying to catch my breath, crying heavily. I was breathing so shallowly that I was starting to white out, and using the last bit of my common senseI crawled back away from the edge, lest I fall to my watery death below. This time, I really could have used a chaperone.
I passed out for I don’t know how long, and when I woke up, the welts had turned to bleeding blisters and I had uncontrollable goose bumps without being cold and a good case of the shakes. I was now officially fucked up.
Eventually, my mother found me and helped me back to a towel and gave me a medicinal Pina Colada. The rest of the vacation–including the following day which was a snorkeling boat cruise sort of thing–was uneventful by comparison. If that horse bucks you and all that good boo-yang, right?
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What’s attacked YOU, Internet whom I love beyond compare?
One of the weirder phobias I have–aside of my fear of tomatoes touching my food–is that I’m terrified of fish. I don’t mean that if I see an aquarium, I’m going to break out into a cold sweat and start crying, no, even I’m not THAT insane.