growinghumans

You belong among the wildflowers

I am a seed that has been dormant under the soil for a long time.

No one has known quite how to tend to me.

How to water me.

How to give me the right attention and sunlight.

But you.

Dear sir.

You see me for what I am.

A wild flower that requires patience

And understanding

A steady hand

And love.

I blossom under your touch.

I face towards the sun when you take my hand in yours.

I thrive when you cup my face and tell me that yes I am enough and I am safe and I will be yours.

Patience

“Where have you been?” he whispered into her cheek, eyes on the fading horizon. The sunset boldly danced on the rippling ocean waves.

It was not a plea. It was not a choked version of Molly Grue begging to know where the one thing she wanted the most in life had been now that she felt too old and tarnished to be able to embrace it.

She smiled and he felt her cheek shift with amusement.

“I wasn’t ready for you; but I am now.”

You are not too old. It is not too late. Your time has not peaked. There is no singular peak to life; it is a series of hills and mountains that you are constantly climbing and descending and in the middle of all that hiking is a glorious ocean sunset.

You are deserving of all of the good that the universe has for you and the universe is not finished with you while you still walk this earth. Hold on.

The Boxer

I have walked away from many things in my life. People, jobs, conversations. I have collected my things and seen myself out.

Some people may take this as a sign of weakness. They may think that I do not posses a certain amount of gumption required to stick things through until the bitter end.

But do you know what you get at the bitter ends of things, dear neglected reader?

You get broken, empty, bitter people.

So, no, sir or madam. I am not weak. I am not diminished by your small opinion of me. I am not shrinking away with my tail between my legs wrought with sadness or guilt.

I am merely intelligent and strong enough to evaluate a situation before it sinks into the sea. I get into my life boat and I continue to survive.

I may limp, bleeding and sobbing into that life boat, but I get there. And I row away as fast as I can.

I am leaving

I am leaving

But the fighter still remains.

And the thunder rolled

Legend has it that the reason I wasn’t in my bed the night Hurricane Gloria blew a pine tree though my bedroom window was because my father had me on the front porch watching the storm.

There is a home movie of me, maybe about 6, standing on a cliff overlooking the Maine coast during a Nor’Easter. The wind was whipping my hair and clothes. I was complaining. My father, behind the camera, kept asking me questions about the storm.

“Which way is the wind blowing, Carrie?”

“Is it raining?”

“What do the clouds look like?”

The sea was churning, and with it, my nerves.

As an adult, I love thunderstorms. When I lived in North Carolina for all those years I would sit on the my front steps with a glass of wine and watch the almost daily systems roll in.

The air felt electric. The clouds were low, burdened.

Here’s the thing, dear readers:

People are only afraid of things they don’t understand.

I grew up watching storms.

Standing in storms.

Studying storms.

I may seem mild in demeanor. I may appear lovely and placid and kind.

But don’t

Not ever

Confuse that with weakness.

I will stand in the damn storm and I will tell you what those clouds look like and I will let the wind whip my hair around my face.

And I will not be afraid.

Pompeii

I am not buried beneath rubble.
I am not scorched.

 

 

I am well and good and vibrant and strong.

 

So.

 

If you think that you ruined me

If you think that your words or your actions will mar me for life or impede me in rising rising rising above it all

 

you are wrong.

 

Because I will rise.

I will shrug off ashes and embers.

I will blow on my finger tips to keep them from smoldering.

 

But what you cannot stop

is the burning deep within me that you tried to tell me was wrong

that was out of place

that was too much

 

I will stoke that fire,

that particular fire.

 

I will move through this life with a burning inside of me and will never make myself tamp it for anyone.

 

I am not burnt to the ground

But, God, am I burning. 

 

But understand this,

I will not be your Pompeii. 

I am not hidden.

I am not smaller.

I am not forgotten or forlorn.

 

I am a phoenix. I rise and rise and burn for the glory of myself.

This Goddamn Mouse

I first heard the mouse in the middle of the night about a month ago. I thought there was a ghost in my room. A ghost seemed more reasonable than a mouse. There was rustling and creaking coming from the far corner of my room, behind where my sister’s old dollhouse is. I had my back to that side of the room, in the bed, eyes closed tightly shut. I didn’t want to see it if it was a ghost, which I was convinced it was.

I eventually turned on some music to drown out the noise and fell back asleep.

 

When I woke up I told my sister that there was a ghost in the room which didn’t reallys surprise her because things like that happen in my family. She told me that I needed to sage the room and we moved on to other topics of conversation.

I took to sleeping with music on at night after that. I didn’t want to hear the ghost.

 

Then, one night, my Tiny Human came barging into my room, scaring the absolute crap out of me, screeching that something was in her room. I sat up in bed and gaped at her.

What did she want me to do about it?

I asked her what it was. She wasn’t sure. It was small and furry and was crawling across her carpet.

Uh.

 

Nope.

 

I am absolutely not dealing with that.

Now, I know what you are thinking.

But, Carrie. You are a brave girl. Why didn’t you just go in there armed with a frying pan or something?

Listen to me, people. There are 2 types of brave people in the world:

The people who barge into dark places armed with weapons

and

The people who admit that they are not qualified for something and OUTSOURCE FOR HELP.

 

I am the second kind of person.

At least when it comes to unknown furry creatures crawling across my child’s room in the middle of the night.

 

I ran downstairs and fetched my father who, being a type 1 brave person, grabbed a flashlight and barreled into the room, searching all of corners of the room.

 

We found nothing. It was late. I was over it.

 

I told my Tiny Human that she had probably just imagined it or that it was the light from the tv or something like that and that it was time to call it a night.

 

She would absolutely not call it a night and insisted on sleeping in my bed with me.

Now, okay.

 

Okay.

People who cosleep with their kids, HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY DO THAT?

I have never been able to sleep next to my kid. She gives off about 100 degrees of heat. She makes weird noises. She wakes up.

But, I’m a wonderful, lovely mother so I rolled my eyes and told her fine that she could sleep with me just for that night.

I did not sleep, naturally.

I was putzing around on my phone and must have nodded off a little bit because at around 4 am I woke up to the sound of scratching. Scratching on the bag of popcorn I had on the floor next to my desk, to be specific.

 

UH. NOPE.

The desk is next to my bed so being the type 2 of brave person was not an option, so I thought I GUESS WE ARE DOING THIS and turned on the flashlight on my phone and pointed it in the direction of the bag. Just in time to see a mouse dart under my bed.

 

Oh.

 

Cool.

 

I woke up Tiny Human quickly with no actual plan except to get the actual FUCK out of that room.

We evacuated to her room where we gave up on sleep and watched Spongebob Square pants until Lowe’s opened at 6.

“What are we going to do?” she asked me.

“We are going to trap him.”

“We aren’t going to kill him are we?”

“Would that bother you?”

“Yes. I don’t want to kill him. He didn’t do anything. He’s just hungry.”

Crap.

“Okay. I will do my best.”

I went to Lowe’s and got 2 non-kill traps that you put peanut butter in and returned to my house to regale my parents of my harrowing morning.

 

They thought it was absolutely hilarious.

I decided that it probably actually was, too.

I set the traps and crawled back into my own bed and fell asleep for a few hours.

I did not catch a mouse that day.

Or the day after that.

I gave up for about a week. Maybe I had scared the actual crap out of him as well and he said “Well fuck this” and went back to his mouse house?

Maybe?

 

BUT NO.

About a week later I woke up to SQUEAKING.

Like

ANGRY SQUEAKING.

Like the sound a mouse makes when he is super unimpressed and wants to maybe kill you in your sleep.

I turned up my music and went back to sleep for the rest of the night but when it was light enough out in my room for me to feel like I was back at the top of the damn food chain I crept out of bed and checked the traps. They were both empty.

 

Like.

 

Completely empty.

 

Like.

 

THE PEANUT BUTTER WAS GONE. But there was no mouse.

Anyone read Flowers for Algernon? No? Just me? Alright.

I started to get stressed out because clearly I was dealing with an advanced rodent situation. I talked to my Tiny Human about hard things. Like sticky paper that would involve the mouse not surviving. The was still not an option. Cool, cool.

 

I also started to rationalize HOW TERRIBLE IS IT REALLY TO HAVE A MOUSE IN YOUR BEDROOM JUST AS A GUEST? But then decided that I didn’t need him running across my face while doing quarantine Zoom pilates in the morning so that was also not an option.

So I reset these damn traps that night because I WENT TO COLLEGE AND MAYBE IT WAS ONLY A LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE BUT YOU ARE A MOUSE AND I AM GOING TO WIN THIS.

I set the traps in a different orientation which made them maybe more sensitive to being triggered.

And I went to bed.

And.

That night.

That very fateful night.

(which was last night)

I caught that goddamn mouse.

 

 

 

 

Life is tricky right now. Weird, foreign challenges are being thrown at us. New ones pop up every day.

It’s easy to draw the blinds.

It’s convenient to hide in bed and pretend that everything is fine.

But

living with a mouse

–with any sort of WEIRD STRESSFUL BULLSHIT–

is unacceptable.

So, get out of bed.

Evaluate your problem.

Bait your traps.

And catch that goddamn mouse.

 

 

 

 

 

Comfort

Here’s the thing about wounds—

sometimes you don’t realize the severity of them until you are asked to bandage them up.

Sometimes you can be bleeding out and not realize it

Because you are busy

Because you are stubborn

Because you are brave.

And it takes the balm to show you the pain. You know that sting when they used to pour hydrogen peroxide on a scrape when you were younger? It’s like that.

I think right now the world is just going through the motions. We watch the news and hear horrible things all day about death and loss and grief.

We are told what to do. When to do it. What to do afterwards.

We are alone.

We are all so alone and because of that I think some of us aren’t talking about the pain. That’s what fear is. It’s emotional pain.

Let this be your balm. Let this ship that rolled into New York yesterday be your sign that you are bleeding out.

Look how big this boat is, y’all. That’s a lot of pain.

But do you see how the size of the ship made you feel? We all felt it. I cannot be the only one. It made me feel afraid but also not alone. People will be on that ship. Helpers and helpless.

We cannot be alone because they would not have sent such a big ship if we were, reader.

Flower Petals

And what she knew now

Was that maybe she uses too many words

And too many emotions

And throws them both around like flower petals

But that someday

Someone

Will love her little wild heart

Will understand her untamed mind

And stretch her beyond what she thought was possible

EPIC.

Listen, I’m going to tell you a story:

 

J. Crew had a sweatshirt on their website about 1.5 years ago that said EPIC on it. I wanted it. I needed it. If you ever played World of Warcraft you understand my desire.

 

The sweatshirt was something ridiculous like $70 so I did not buy it.

 

But I obsessed over it.

 

Did you hear me?

 

I obsessed about it.

I thought my life was somehow incomplete without it.

 

And then, last month, I bought it on a used clothing site for half that.

It came in the mail a few days later and I felt SO EXCITED to get it finally.

 

I opened the box. I put the sweatshirt on.

 

And it was just kind of…

 

Meh.

 

You know?

 

It wasn’t anything special.

 

I am wearing that sweatshirt today but really only because I paid actual money for it and I feel the need to get exactly $35 worth of joy from it.

 

Life is like that, right?

You obsess over what you think will be AMAZING AND AWESOME and then it happens and it is super lack luster.

 

Let me tell you, readers.

 

You do not have to wear the sweatshirt.

If you want to donate the sweatshirt because it does not fit you or it looks bad on you, that is okay.

 

Do not let society tell you what you need to keep in your life. Do not let other people dictate what your life is supposed to look like.

Life is not meant to look like any specific way.

That is the secret I have learned this way.

A family does not look 1 specific way.

A life does not have a pre constructed model for success.

 

If the marriage is not working, leave.

If the job is no working, leave.

If the friendship is not working, leave.

 

 

Get your money’s worth from the sweatshirt and then donate it to the Goodwill.

Let

It

Go.

 

THAT, and that alone, is what makes life epic.