Confession Tuesday - the Dark Cloud Edition

Dear Reader,

Everything has been hard lately.

From writing a blog post, to fixing a stove, to jump-through-the-hoops paperwork, to being a mom, to rejections.

I confess I have carried around a headache like a good friend.

I confess I have tried to write a blog post called "The Art of Rejection" but haven't finished it.

This is probably good because yet another rejection came in yesterday that was surprising in that it made me laugh, not that I was surprised to be rejected by this journal (it's a fantastic journal), but what the editor said about my poem.  It's painfully, wonderfully enjoyable to read.

It's kind of like coming to a place in your life when everything feels so bad and a tree falls on your car and it's hysterical.  Of course!

I confess I will share it all with you, but in my upcoming rejection post.  And I confess, you will probably feel better about yourself because you can enjoy my life of rejections recently.

~

I confess this is how I've been feeling lately-- HappysadhappySADHAPPYtearycontentsadupdownhopelessandhavingagreattime.

In the last three weeks, more people have said to me, "You don't seem like yourself."  They are right, but who I am and why I can't I ask her to leave?

One day I had such dark-cloud energy I knew it would bring more dark-energy to me.

And it did-- there are 4 people in my community who I dislike.  Crazyangryresentful people who I keep my distance from.  I knew the day I stepped outside, my negative energy might pull them out of the woodwork.  I expected to see one of them.  But no, I saw 3 of them.  3 out of 4 badenergy people showed up in my life.  Hello cranky sisters, how are you?

My husband said I have drawn that coincidence myself.  But if I was drawing coincidences, I would have had Conan O'Brien showing up with keylime pie or painted a rainbow with Ira Glass walking under it with a cup of coffee.  I try not to paint rainclouds, but then again, if I'm not myself, maybe the stormysky-she is painting with the wrong palette.

~

I confess last night I just looked around at my healthy family, my warm house, my kitchen filled with food and said, "Poor me and my middle class problems."  This is my way of reminding myself there are no bombs going off in my neighborhood.  I drink organic milk.  I go out to dinner.  There is no reason to feel down in my life.  And yet.

I confess if I could kill a phrase from the English language, that's what it would be "and yet."

When I think about all of it, my head hurts.  Overthinking is my addiction.  While others prefer alcohol, cigarettes, food, working out, name-your-way-to-run-away--I prefer to charge straight into my thoughts and make them worse.  It's a gift.  I love to take a tiny issue and make it moonsize, then look over every crater.  Ah yes, this is a problem, there's a satellite in my living room and it's rolling over the cat.

My best self takes this imaginative energy and runs with it, writes poems and essays and memoirs.  She gets lost in the words and when I'm there, nothing can hurt me or move me into the overthinking place because I am creating.

I confess I hate writing all this blah-blah-dark-sky stuff, but a good friend recently told me "People look at you and see a perfect life."  I had to laugh.  Do we really think other people have perfect lives?


Look closer, I thought.

So I'll end here with dessert and humor and maybe a little gratitude for the things I do have even when I'm not appreciating them.

Amen.

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