Snowstorm

All around me I see examples of paths that individuals have chosen, no two lives are alike. While I engage with the environment, I often still feel like an observer who is not fully participating because there is so much filtering through her mind. Overstimulated. Distracted by the trains of thought that take one avenue for a couple blocks then suddenly change direction, change cars, change tracks. I find ways that things are connected; it isn’t difficult. I am observing, observing.

I have seen so many people. Had the fortune and misfortune of getting to know some of them, these characters. I welcome one into my life, and another, and another (and there are never too many), and many allow me through the doors of their hearts. Some fade into memories I may never recall. I’m more aware now. Not only of the world, but of myself, and in a way that becomes less and less self-conscious and more and more conscious. Comfortable. Frustrated, perhaps, since knowledge is not bliss, but more confident and free.

There is always possibility. And I have not tried to secure parts of my life into routines. Have not discovered where all of my passions gravitate. It is nice to know that I have not discovered all parts of myself, and that the parts of myself that are familiar are not fully explored or have been dismissed upon realizing that they do not lend or have inhibited my growth.

I am collecting stories. And I’m not sure yet which ones are worth being retold, but I am trying to record enough samples to weave spectacular stories together. To take strands from this part of life and that and create patterns that people have not yet created. Stories that do not push a moral or point. Stories that are not conventional or linear, but simple and profound in their own right. Because they reveal something not only of what I have seen, but of what has happened, what has, in some moment, unfolded just so.

The snow covered the town today. We woke and there were piles and piles of white and the air was so thick with flakes that it was not easy to see the horizon as I drove into town. I thought the gas station would be dead because people do not enjoy driving in unplowed streets that are only going to get worse as the day gets colder. But the station thrived for a few hours as people scrambled to secure enough of the basics to save them from going out again tomorrow, Sunday, to covered, frozen cars and white streets and cold fingers and toes.

My coworker couldn’t get out of his driveway, let alone up the hill that led out of the small community where he lived. I arranged for him to get a ride into town because I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay at the station for the entirety of the day. As I resolved finding a four-wheel drive ride for my coworker, I realized where some of my anger was directed. I realized I was mad at someone and felt accomplished having realized that this person had done things—that I was justifiably pissed off. I knew I would get over it, that I wouldn’t be angry or unforgiving, but that I was pissed nonetheless. For once my anger had a name, a face, a point of origin that didn’t have to do with just how the world was. I mean, people are in the world, but people are in control of their own actions, and this person had some pretty shitty actions that were directed toward me. I’m being vague because the actions themselves are inconsequential at this point. I did nothing about them at the time, it serves no purpose describing them now. All that matters is that shit happened and I let it slide and I shouldn’t have and now I’m letting myself feel angry about what did happen even though there’s nothing to do about it now. A confrontation may be in order, but I am not the type to confront while anger is guiding me. So once this settles into something more passive, more objective, more I’m not still in it, I’ll be able to address it further.

Just when I’ve reached a comfortable cushion within this post-fact anger, the source of that anger waltzes through the door, asks for two packs of cigarettes as he pulls a Gatorade from the cooler, and I have to test my control yet again. I have to keep my face from getting red, I have to keep my tone inconspicuous, curt but polite, just like any other stranger who comes to buy cigarettes and a drink. And he comes to the counter and I’m having trouble scanning his damn drink and all I want is for him not to be there. Not to disrupt my moment of zen anger. Not to see his eyes or hear his voice and the way it sounds so convincingly happy because he might be into someone who’s into him.

And he leaves. And it’s back to making coffee and reading a romance novel and pushing buttons and smiling at familiar and unfamiliar faces that come for drinks and cigarettes and fuel.

After work I’ve agreed to take home the coworker who I arranged a ride into town for so the last thing I want to do is go home and settle into my blankets when I will just be leaving them again, so I decide to visit a friend who lives down the street from the station. He has lots of movies and he offers me a weak pain-killer which helps to put the anger into a safe part of my mind. I vent for a little while and he makes me laugh and pop a couple of his zits and then he naps while I watch movies. He offers me peirogies which I prepare (they’ve been there for a year, but they’re frozen, so they’re fine) and I watch Predator which I have actually never seen before.

He is a comfortable friend. He has issues (and understands mine) and there is no sexual tension and I don’t judge him and we are comfortable (he asks me to pop his zits after all, and offers me foot rubs). He’s been jaded by love and I love him for not having faith in women even though I hope someday he regains it. He listens to me. He is sweet to me. And I have no desire for anything more than friendship with him and he says that is all he wants and I know he is telling me the truth. We lie on his memory foam bed and I am always the big spoon. He prefers my arm to drape around him and I move it when it falls asleep or when I want to look at the television from a different angle. He makes me feel, rather than just think, that I am totally loveable even though there are few who have been the big or little spoon with me.

Later it is time to take my coworker home. An old lover, who is friends with the coworker and whom I speak to every once in a while when he randomly calls me, calls to say that he was planning on stopping over to said coworker’s house and invites me to visit. Since there is no desire between me and said ex-lover, and since I would like to get my mind right before going home, I agree to stop into my coworker’s house. He warns me emphatically that his house is a bachelor pad, with the bachelor stereotype of a mess. I laugh and explain that I don’t care. And I don’t. We go inside and ex-lover is sitting on a chair in front of a computer and the television is on the History channel. The house is a mess, but not so bad that it is repulsive, and I sit on a chair and hang out with the two men who are at least ten years older than me, fun to talk to, and who each have stories that I enjoy hearing.

Ex-lover explains that the History channel is military controlled and therefore mostly propaganda. I agree that it tries to invoke fear and perhaps nationalism. There is a program on about the seven signs of the apocalypse and what has happened and what could happen that indicates the coming of the apocalypse. I laugh because I have no real fear of death. Death is not an end. I do not believe the end is near, but I don’t care either way. This is a comforting. Zen apathy.

I once told the object of my affection-turned-anger (though I am also angry at myself and not only said object and I still feel a form of affection toward him) that if I can sleep each night knowing that I may not wake and feel confident that I spent my day as best I could, that I could die content. That I would not feel the need to haunt, I would not have unfinished business. Sure, there is always more to see and hear and touch and taste and smell. But I’m so aware of my senses, of myself, of my environment, that so many beautiful details have filtered through my perspective, checked and noted. Recognized.

I cannot deny the appeal of sharing my life with someone. But I have yet to meet someone who I want to do that with who wants to do that with me. I’m looking for someone with just the right amount of adventure, nonconformity, creativity, intelligence and love to make the effort to share my life with. In the meantime, and it must be so even if I meet said someone, I am gathering stories. I am enjoying being alone (though I am rarely). Experiencing. Observing. Registering life in as many parts of my mind and body as I can. Filling myself up to the brim. Straining it through, releasing and taking it all in again.

Blessed are we who attach significance to an otherwise instinctual world. The burden of a life is the most lovely weight of all.