Rain. You may be up to your ears in it (or snow), but we’re not. So a cloudy sky holds promise. If we’re lucky. I start thinking about possibilities. I cross my fingers. I consider dancing.
But for whatever reason, I don’t have it in me to dance right now. If I blame the lack of rain, I’m lying to myself. For there’s some sort of psychic weight holding me down today. Some sort of uncertainty is keeping me from soaring. Maybe it’s natural bio-rhythms. Maybe it’s low blood sugar.
The truth is, some days just feel like this. They hold the same promise as others, and yet I find myself unable to rise to the gifts of those precious 24 hours. Part of me wants to bounce off the walls and smile so much my face hurts. Another part of me wants to hide in the closet, like I did when I was about 10 years old. At that time, I went so far as to set up a sleeping bag and an entire nesting spot in my closet at the house on Westchester Drive. For months I slept in my closet. It was small and it was safe. It was also extremely isolated and solitary. I’m not able to revisit the kid-me to understand what drove me to that little cave. My adult thoughts of hiding are no less mysterious. I’m sure I could dig around in my psyche and come to some sort of self-knowledge on the subject, but I don’t really want to. That part of me is dark and murky. Those corners of my mental storage frighten me. Yes, there are truths hidden in that darkness, but I’m not quite brave enough to venture into my void, hand in front of me to keep me from running into – into what? Nope, not quite brave enough.
So as I sit here writing about the parts of me I tend to hide, I hear Florence + The Machine playing in another room… “And it’s hard to dance with a devil on your back, so shake him off…”
I can try. Standing is the first step…