If the Wind Could Blow Through Me

Blow away everything that's adling my brain and spinning my head and making me sick, I maybe could think straight. Blow away the fact that my job is going away in a week, and with it my cell phone and my best link to the outside world. Blow away the fact that I think I've got an ear infection, but I know I don't have insurance to go and see a doctor and medicine for it. Blow away the fact that a dear dear friend is flying through next Monday, but if I want to see her, I have to ask for time off on my last week of work, and my boss is going to make a stink. If only the wind could blow straight through me, blow away the fears and the frustrations and the facts and only leave the excitement and the joy and the hope and the hunger. But I've stood out in the wind and caught nothing but a chill and lost nothing but time, and the world still feels like its spinning too fast. And I still need to register for classes and buy school books and find a job and now a cell phone plan and I still have to say hard goodbyes and be honest with some folks about some things I've been half-truthing about and figure out how I'm going to keep some promises I've made. And today maybe I'm wishing the wind would blow and take me away with it.

On Self

Because it's been the sense of self that's been hurting here lately. When my boss does my job for me or leaves me out of the loop on something, it feels like he doesn't trust me; when the other boss takes my presence for granted, makes me work through the flu and then doesn't give a flip what I do all day, it makes me feel underappreciated; when my friends make plans without me or don't offer the right kinds of comfort while I'm hurting, I wonder if they care about me or if they'll miss me when I'm gone; when the boy I thought was headed for something significant flirts with the wrong girl across the dinner table, I wonder if I'll ever have anything certain. But, contrariwise, when somebody spends all day trying to make me laugh, I feel significant; when my row at church fills up with kids just like my moms back in Carolina, I feel like I'm doing something right; and when I get to say that I absolutely have to go in on my day off, I feel important. See, all of these little uglinesses that sit on my heart and distract me, it is the sense of self, of the promotion and the preservation of self that makes me care what people say and think, care when things go the way of my dignity being preserved or the way of my name being dirt, or, worse, forgotten. This self-ness, sometimes, works to my favor. It makes me better at my job, it's why I work hard to know all the answers to all the questions, to always be in all of the places at all of the times, to forsee what will need doing and do it before it becomes pressing. Often, though, it works against me. Every bad mood I'm ever in is because something has happened that trod on the toes of that sense of self. Every time I'm acting like a spoiled child, it's because somebody ignored me or treated me poorly and my self-ness didn't like it. And, if we call it what it is, self-ness is selfishness and self-centeredness and self-serving. And yeah, we all do it, but that doesn't make it right or safe. And it's self keeps us at each other's necks trodding on each other's backs and rat-racing into the black. It's self lets us talk bad about each other and try too hard and hurt othe people. And if we could just lose the sense of self, it seems to me like everything else would fall into place after it.



Anybody else struggle with this? Or is it just me?