“Hold, Please”
Posted on January 22, 2013 - Filed Under self reflect
I am not sure where to start… that has been what has been causing me pause lately, this visceral holding ground, elevator music, the breath underwater just before the exhale, the standing in a busy room amidst the noise and not knowing which direction to head or what conversation to engage in. It isn’t a complaint, more an observation, that I am sitting a bit uninspired, uncertain, and waiting. I am not sure what I want, or where to go, or how to pursue, but I am gaining clarity on what I don’t want, and some ideas about the options that are growing.
2012 has been a year full of unexpected changes, a constantly moving ball of anxiety grabbing and tossing parts of me as it snakes in and out of days. Not a day I am not grateful for, and yet lots of days I felt uncertain and charged about work, relationships, and general finances. I was pleased with the turn over to 2013, hopeful that with my frail handle on superstition, I might break free of the consuming complacency I feel. Hopeful I can break away from the wait for my subway while John Lennon sings “Imagine” as I pause on hold.
I’ve neglected my camera. I have held on in a space where I exist on the perimeter, pained by the lack of passion, yet holding. I smile at the friendly advances of friendship, unsure I can add one more thing to the banging, hair-wrenching anxiety that creeps in when I am most tired. I drive, and run my brain, and work, and sometimes meander a dance… still on hold. I stare at a half-finished canvas for 3 months, on hold. UGH, I sometimes drive myself nuts in the holding patterns I get into, wondering what keeps me here?
What keeps me here? Comfort? Predictability? Familiarity? Avoidance? Fear of the unknown? Fear of being unlovable? (yes, yes, yes… and there it chimes, “imagine all the people…”) I wander in and out of conversations with myself, trying to make sense of my experiences, trying to assign meaning so that somehow it feels comfortable, or better yet, predictable. If I know what it all means, if I know what to expect, I can better control my comfort level. Yet 2012 (and especially my job) has done nothing but toss change and force adjustments on me. On the opposite side, my “intimate” relationships (or efforts to have them) have instead been emotionally monotone, with a lack of vibrancy and color that has left me feeling sadly discouraged. I climb into my warm cocoon of a bed – alone, quiet, and wishing for a conversation that gets me out of my head and into my heart. Wishing for a hand on my face, and a tangled connected gaze that assures me I am seen. Wishing for guidance instead of an open window for my ranting complaints about the bully in the office, or the appreciation complex I seem to have as I work like a horse to no end.
I need SOMETHING to help me reframe my thinking patterns – something to take me out of a holding pattern and finish a piece of art, or write in my blog, or make passionate “love” in the world, or laugh till I cry, or cry until I have lost my voice and can only laugh.
And so I get a cold, and do NOTHING for two days. And on day three, like a GOD inspired to do something, there is a small light that tells me to finish my painting, just start there… and I do. A little voice says, “Stop what isn’t working” and I try that on for size. I wheeze, and cough, and paint, and sing a break-up song, and listen to music, and cough again… and finally there is something there of expression. It is full of color and movement. It makes no sense and makes perfect sense. For a brief moment, I am taken off hold and hear, “Thanks for waiting…” For a moment I see myself, and I feel relief for letting her out instead of smothering her in the complacency. I wonder if I can write, and I do. I smile, tenderly, and shake myself off, and hope that I will rage a bit against losing her again. I am, for a moment, hopeful that I will find a laugh that makes me cry, or that I will have opportunity to make passionate love in the world again. I know, as I stare at my creation, regardless of how much or little I like it, or how complete or incomplete it feels, that everything in my world is an evolution of my being, a part of the journey. I see that nothing is static, everything changes, and as scary as that seems, that is one certainty I can hold on to.
Always Change, 2013