*I am going to offer a warning for this post the content it carries falls under the TMI category but if you know me it wouldn't surprise you in the least that I would be willing to put this out there.
Beach and I are used to being alone. The alone in a crowd kind of alone. But a few days back it got overwhelming for me. Me overwhelmed is me so lost in my own head that I don’t answer when someone is standing in front of me calling my name. This time it was Kyle at the market on a beautiful Sunday morning maybe he hadn’t said my name maybe he had but he was smiling and waving and through the storm in my mind I watched the community he brought together come out, come out for each other. And Beach at 7 yrs old is already a strong member of that community just like she was when we were up at the U lost in the halls of Biology alone in a crowd together.
The only thing that has changed is the theater of elevation.
And I have to wonder about that world I left behind. And the people who let me go. How I stepped from higher education into the silence of aftermath of my sister’s death so easily. Like a thief I stole away my life.
I have to wonder how I am managing to slip through the cracks of my life again. Why I find myself isolated despite my best attempts to not be. Do not confuse geographical for mental isolation. I am everywhere with everyone all the time...alone.
I’m missing something, a lesson I’m not getting, a concept I can’t understand, a connection I can't make…there is a moment when you reach the bottom and you have to decide.
“October 2008. Driving in the Dark. How do you explain the slow descend into madness? What words would you choose to describe the world as seen though my eyes? Would it matter? I mean, how anyone who has not been there themselves could possible be made to understand just how I came to be here not knowing which direction I was running. Whatever reason stops you, you will find a world crashing to a halt carries casualties in its wake. And when you dare to open your eyes you will find that this is the bottom. Maybe it isn’t so bad. Maybe around the next corner you will find your way. Standing alone beneath a ceiling of grey branches stabbing out the sky one by one, walled in by thick knee-high under brush threatening to over take the trail. The road, worn with deep troughs, long ago weathered and dried. It is as if summer has forgotten this place, sentenced to an endless winter without snow. At every corner there is another turn, no spots from which you can view your progress. In shadow there is an ominous feeling of a mountain high above you but no sight of it. Do you continue up hoping to find your mountain or do you ascend hoping to find you home?” Taming Venus, mlb
Maybe it is simply the time of year or the end of a long hard summer taking its toll. I know how to break free of this I have done it before. It is a matter of when. When will the path I follow lead me out of the woods...
“June 2009. Chasing Antelope. The dawn breaks hard in the desert. Heat and light are the same. The vast expanse of tundra ripples across valley to valley. Mountains exploded from the grasses and junipers. Life is heavy here. I rub dust from my eyes, pull back my hair, and lace my running shoes. Even as I watched her do the same I knew this will have to be the last run for me and her. I simply cannot carry her any further. It is a bittersweet moment letting go. Just as holding on to what was before, the release is slow and silent. I was there my feet striking the desert floor, sunlight filtering through the brush, the morning ripe with the smell of sage, and the air full of dust fairies. We were together there running as sisters and when I came up over the horizon she was gone. I was running alone. The antelope stopped grazing to stare at me and at the nothingness that followed me as I ran by. I finally had the answer to their question “What are you running from?” What I have always been running from, I am running from myself.”
Taming Venus, mlb 6/09 
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