Mud

On my desk is a little Hot Wheels truck painted to look like it has been muddin'. I like it; it was left there by a former desk mate with a note saying "good luck to you." I keep it there in front of me right below my computer screen to remind me I should be having "luck" when what I really have is mud.
Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with mud. Mud, dirt, earth is very symbolic to me right now. It brings to mind one of the very happiest times when my first son played in the mud and was covered from head to toe, I have pictures of that somewhere and I should get them out again. It also helps me to navigate away from the profound, the complicated and helps me to remember to keep things simple.
I have never been muddin' in my truck; I am not sure I would like it. I am too careful to keep things straight, clean and in order, at least in appearances. I do take risks, with my heart, but not physical risks associated with getting dirty or driving my truck headlong into the mud. I am quite sure I would wreck, get stuck or hurt myself. Yeah, I am pretty pent up and retentive about alot of things and need to learn to let go, still its hard to undo a lifelong trend of needing to keep things okay.
I recently lost my grandmother, a sweet little lady with 90 years under her belt. I used to spend summers with her and my papa at their place in East Texas. She would set me up in the yard with dishes, cooking utensils, a table and chairs and I would have the most fun making mud pies and serving them to my dolls, my imaginary friends and in the evenings to she and my papa. I wasn't worried about getting dirty then...funny. By contrast, the summer I was ten years old I went to summer camp and my mother had bought new clothes for me to wear at camp. Camp is not a particularly clean place with its canoeing and hiking, swimming in the lake, fishing and campfires. I remember my mother yelling at me when I returned home with those new clothes, most of them stained with mud or dirt never to come clean. Therein lies the problem.
Having too much control over too much in your life is really to have lost total control over it all. (I said that, you can quote me) If there comes a time in life when we forget to squish our toes in the mud or hell just lay down and waller in it, then life ceases to be the fun, spontaneous, joyous occasion it was meant to be. I am learning and though it may be a while before you catch me in the mud, its not like I'm not thinking about it!

Who Are you To Me?

Having been so very alone and isolated for nearly eight months, I am realizing now that relationships are only a small part of what makes the world go around. I used to collect friends like trinkets and breathe in friendship like air, believing it was essential for survival. I invested so much of myself into others giving little pieces to whoever would partake until really there was nothing left. Feeling very empty, very burnt out and very used up I made some very self disdaining decisions for my life that left me cut off from every friendship and relationship I had given myself to.
I used to a person who wondered about others. I might have been someone who saw a mother struggling in the line at the grocery store and offered a kind word; I might have been someone who lent a dollar at the dry cleaners when the patron in front of me is short for payment; I might have been someone one who helped a lost and crying child find his mother at the park; I might have been someone who opened a door and smiled and said hello to you. I might have been...I am not so much now.
The funny thing about friends is that though they are friends, they are only people, human people. And human people often reduce themselves to what is basic, what is necessary and what is comfortable. Beyond the basic, necessary and comfortable relationships get sticky and messy; And what is sticky and messy either gets cleaned up or walked away from. When relationships cease to exist in the happy place people quit on them out of lack of confidence in their ability to make it alright again or out of lack of interest in taking on the cares of someone else when it might take to much time, energy or control away from ourselves. I am guilty too.
So, if I have called you my friend and it has been eight months or more since you heard from me, I am sorry, perhaps we were not friends at all but just people who bumped into each other on this crazy ride of life and lost contact in the crowd of everyone else.
My life is different now, I have so much less of myself than I had before; so much less to share. I have been wounded and crippled by life; blinded by my own mistakes; damaged by circumstance. I am selfish now with my time, my emotions, my money and my most importantly my friendship. I don't want to be discarded ever again so I am careful now of who owns a piece of me.