I have been very involved recently – Attempting to move to the middle of nowhere (a.k.a Montana), starting my own business with actual employees and getting my grubby little hands involved in the #FP website (which I designed and am maintaining). All of this is being done on the side of my regular work – taking care of beautiful Abigail and trying to keep the ants from infiltrating every part of my apartment.
For the last month, I have been so busy, I have completely neglected myself. I haven’t written, I haven’t exercised (except the time that my mom came into town and I tried to pretend that I wasn’t driving myself insane) and I have been eating stress like it’s chocolate-frosted cupcakes. And, I’ve been eating a lot of chocolate-frosted cupcakes.
Okay. So it hasn’t been all bad.
Now, I have a chance to write for you, to you. And, here I am, blanking out, wondering if I’ve finally managed to kill that creative girl that lives inside my skull. Perhaps I dumped too many deadlines on her adorable head. Maybe she was crushed under all the new responsibilities I made her carry. Is it possible that she drowned in a sea of receipts, bills and compromises? Is my sweet little freckled, blonde, 12-year-old muse wearing black heels, a pencil skirt and sporting a sleek updo with a slash of blood-red lipstick? Is she tapping a clipboard, pencil poised over a to-do list with the words, “Crush the creative soul”?
I sure hope not.
How does one resuscitate one’s soul? Through chocolate liquers and German sausage? Through walks through the underground tunnels that live beneath Portland? Through tattoos and singing Les Miserables at the top of one’s lungs? Through heart-to-heart conversations with homeless men that smell like VooDoo donuts, who jingle gold dollars in tobacco-stained hands? Through kissing on a leather couch like a teenager, hands roaming, heart stomping?
I don’t know about you, kids. I don’t know how you remind yourself that you’re alive. But, I’ve found the need over the last 24 hours to remind myself that this world is about more than just checking off an eternal to-do list.
Sucking the marrow out of life gets harder as life begins to settle around me. There is more to lose now, more than ever before. Risks evolve from being adventures to being liabilities against the future. My life is becoming less fluid, more concrete. And, I find that it has become vital to smash and break the barriers and confines before everything inside of me hardens to unbreakable steel.
So, I wear leather. I put on wigs when I go grocery shopping. I buy 5-inch leopard-skin heels that don’t match anything I own. I write songs that I’ll never share, about lovers I’ve never had. I bypass “closed” signs and explore vacant buildings. To smash apart the barricades of adulthood. To remember that living is about risk and adventure. To convince the little girl to stop playing at being a grown-up. So that she can just recognize life for the beautiful, frightening thing it is, every, every moment.
You Have Time for Just One More:
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