Reflections on a Snow Covered Rooftop

This evening has been so incredibly quiet. And it just so happens to have been exactly what I needed... along with a nice bottle of rum and Dr. Pepper on hand. 

Since I first moved into this loft, the sounds of city life have been a constant. Yet, tonight is a night when mother nature insisted on quieting the busiest parts of town with ice, snow, and bitter cold. 

After a long day at work, I braved the frozen black pond that was Albert Pike Rd. and ventured home where a hot bath was calling my name. I expected the crazies on the road to make my journey treacherous or foolish, but I was met with very few cars traveling my direction. Driving fifteen to twenty miles an hour was actually extremely liberating. 

I wasn't surprised to see so many stores closed. Lights were off and parking lots were empty at only 5:30 in the evening. Very unusual for a Monday, but not under conditions like we had today.

My car stereo was off. I could hear the sloshing of icy puddles along the side of the road. The cracking of the ice on my windshield kept me present and alert. With each turn, my front wheel drive Ford did a slight slide in the rear along the ice...and can you believe I actually enjoyed it a little? Shhh...don't tell.

So it was just me and the frozen road. Well, me and the frozen road and my thoughts. I realized about a quarter of my drive home that I have been neglecting my thoughts. I have been pushing them down into the deepest reserves of my think tank. "No time for those, Joy. You're going to over-think things. Just live!" That's my usual persistent notion to myself as thoughts of worry, curiosity, concern, intrigue, or thoughts of frustration cross my path. I've always been taught to "Just Pray" and not let the worries of the world bring me down. 

But sometimes, it's good to over-think. It helps my mind free itself of those feelings I listed above.

You see, I have a few concerns that tend to boil up to the surface, and the majority of the time I feel extremely helpless. This is why I break out the clanking pots and lids and Tupperware containers and shove them away for a later date.  But really, truthfully, that is not me. And it depresses me on such a deep, excruciating level. I have always been able to plan and implement that plan with such precision. Yet over the last few years, I seem to have lost myself. I've lost that drive to be amazing! Divorce will do that to you... so will dating the wrong people after a divorce, which in turn makes things all the more depressing. Constantly asking myself "Will I ever get to be happy? Do I deserve to be happy? Is this one the right one?" 

Then there's the ever-nagging reminder that I need to get back to my career--ya know, the thing I went to school to do--teaching English. Sigh... After so many failed attempts, after an inability to punch through the wall of "Who you know" and the wall of "lack of experience," I gave up. Three years teaching in a small school, doing what I loved, I left in absolute frustration and completely defeated by a boss who found me incompetent and a husband who found me unlovable. Now I don't have a single clue what I'm going to do with my life.

See, this kind of stuff, if left neglected, will drive a person bonkers. I'm almost there.
I thought having a boyfriend would help me talk a lot of these things out, help guide my passions into the direction they're meant to go. Instead, I find myself clamming up, afraid to talk, afraid to bore him or anyone else to death with my incessant whining and sadness. 

But something happened tonight on that peaceful rooftop. I stood there, left only with my thoughts, and they so overwhelmed me that I became extremely broken. I listened to myself as I cried for the first time in a very long time. Truly cried. I heard my own heart breaking, and I listened. I decided right then and there that I was no longer going to neglect that part of myself. If these thoughts are too much for any one person to hear, then maybe I will let my fingers do the talking from now on. Maybe this blog is exactly what I needed for this moment in my life. Because my heart, she has so much to say...if only I will listen.