Swings: everlasting joy.

Ever since I can remember I have always been passionate about swings. I love the way they make you feel like gravity is optional, like a breeze is ever present, like you're flying, like you're important. I most commonly compare the feeling to flying without wings, ever since I read the Goosebumps book "How I Learned to Fly" I think I always associated it with that similar feeling of flying that jack gets when he flies around at night (nevermind the fact that I always wanted to be Mia "a young girl who is always wearing hearts on her earrings, wrists, socks, and so on" - because I love hearts)... I have always loved swinging at night.

I told a friend at work about how I love swings, how I take long night walks to calm myself and sort out my thoughts, and how those walks usually take me to a swing set where I can stay and swing for hours. Since I told him this he has always poked fun at me for liking swings - even though he said "no, it's cute." he still always makes snooty remarks, which is totally fine because they are they funny.

So today, I was feeling a little off a little before sunset and I set out for the beach. There is this lovely swing set up on the sand where you can watch the waves crash, and the kids dig and run and play, and the dogs prance, and the couples hold hands. It's perfectly placed way back where not so many people are, so you can notice life without life noticing you. For me, that's where I put my life on pause and my worries in the hamper to be washed away - that's where I smile at nothing, and everything.

While I was swinging I received a text from that fellow co-worker who pokes fun at me about the swings, and I told him where I was, he lives near the beach. Out of boredom he set his anti-swing pride aside and came to join me for a while. He sat awkwardly on the swings, and joked about how it gave him awful childhood flashbacks and how he felt creepy swinging there... and then he asked: "Why do you like them so much?" in this same moment something in the world aligned - because WHY I love swings so much is a hard thing to describe, I just do - and from a few swings over the happiest, most bubbley, giggle and laugh fit came from a little girl who couldn't have been older than three and as we looked over at her, she looked over at us and as our eyes met she vocalized a perfect: "WEE!" and continued to giggle. Her mom had just pushed her on the swing a bit, and turned away. She was so happy. and I looked at my friend, and I said: "That's why." because in the full twenty minutes we were swinging by her, all she could do was giggle and smile and look over as I dug my feet in the sand and say: "I'm beating you! I'm higher!" between giggles and smiles... She was so cute.

That is how swings are supposed to make you feel. That is how they do make me feel.

When I have problems I can't solve, thoughts eating at my emotions, anger I can't shake... I find swings to sit on to help me fly - fly away for a brief time and as I get further with every swing, every problem shrinks with the distance - I can see them as a whole and sort them out, or see them for what they are and just let them go.......

"this is what dreams are made of..."

I am personally, not a huge fan of dreaming... unless of course it's a dream about a Pie auction in which I am a millionaire, or better yet, a billionaire.

I think it's because my dreams always amplify my negative, insecure, and down emotions to an 11 (watch spinal tap). It's never like I fall asleep and have a really good dream that kick starts my day and pushes me to take those first steps out of bed no convincing needed... No, it's never that way.

My dreams are always the type where I wake up horrified, sad, mad, confused... and so on.

You're in a dark hallway with no doors or windows, it's dimly lit but the lights flicker oninously. The wall paper is warped and peeling and it's the color of sadness, an empty grayish that used to be a color of expression which now sits neglected and faded collecting dust and losing purpose. It's the color of loneliness, the only description you can pull from it because that's what you are, in the hallway, and you want something to relate to. And alone you stand there. You can't see far enough one way or the other to see where the hallway might lead and there no clues as to how you got there, or which way to get out. You feel a bone chilling draft go through, though it isn't particularly cold it just shakes you to your core - maybe there isn't a way out, but if you don't look you will never know... but you don't know which way to go... you don't know what lies awaiting you in either direction, you can't even discern where the draft originated... you wander one way, hoping to fine some sign of something and you only stumble upon more nothing. you head the other way again because maybe you made the wrong choice... perpetual nothingness. you can't remember where you started from and vertigo sets in... and then you wake up... having never felt more lost and alone with nowhere to go even though you were just in a hallway... and now your room is dark, your house is quiet, and it's empty. but the kind of quiet that your house is, is the sound of loneliness. It's loud resounding silence that drowns out everything and nothing... and you feel the same as you did in the hallway, because there isn't anything to pull your mind away from there. and you are alone.

.............

now I will go to sleep, and cross my fingers in hopes that I just sleep...

A long way.

I put in a time-line today, my life 5 years ago til now... It's fascinating, I think, the distances I've traveled emotionally and physically in that time. I verbally mapped out the journey with a friend today, I yapped out the journey you could say. From love and loss, fear and strength... and that was just 1/4 of the life I've lived, and an even smaller fraction of the life I'm chasing.

I guess my mind was blown at what little time it takes to grow, but also at how fleeting it all is... I'm too young to have a mid-life crisis, so I'll just call it a Tuesday crisis. Luckily, I'm female and I can have "whatever-whenever-get-out-of-my-way" crises. I should really abuse that privilege... but I don't. This wasn't even able to be classified a 'crisis' per se, not a melt-down, not anything...

Just a continuous chain of thoughts and fears of 'what ifs' and 'maybes' ... because what if maybe you never do what you thought you could? or should? or would?
Even the simplest of things that I long for could go unfulfilled... and then where will I be? but it's impossible to know now anyways. It's not a waste of time to ponder, though.

"Why can't you be in a good mood? How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood and be in a good mood once in a while?"

For a while I forgot that life was full of adventure. I know that everyday has the potential to be one and it's far too easy to let it sneak by without taking it on... I don't want to do that anymore, not as often as I have been. Today I sprinted through best buy ducking and hiding behind shelves like an obvious-ninja from no one in particular, talked to strangers, sacrificed dignity for the sake of hilarity... and it reminded me of childhood. I was so happy, and I really needed it.

There was a show called "Ed" that used to air on NBC. I love that show, and I have been watching it again recently. Ed and his best friend Mike have what I refer to as "$10 bets" which range from "10 bucks if you meow loud enough to make that guy turn around," to "10 bucks if you place your lunch order in rhyme," and "10 bucks if you ask the waitress to bring you a doggy bag for one french fry." I have decided to start doing awesome little $10 bets to myself (because I have no other takers) just to help push those moments in life that are nearly unforgettable for no other reason than that they are entertaining and silly.

Why the picture? ... Well I spent an entire day with a camera where all the pictures of me were my face covered because I hate having pictures taken of me. This is the only one that I got of my face, and it wasn't SO bad -- never mind that I turned it purple...

Until next time...