The sun bid me farewell not too long ago. Now all I see is the overwhelming bright light coming from the overhead lights at the soccer field by my apartment. Often I look out onto the field from the window by my bed and I think about the years I spent running and kicking and praying for goals and assists and wins. Often I think about how much of my life was defined by those practices and weekends. I think about how much of me could be defined in the smell of sweat and the sound of cheering. Three leaf clovers down my shinguards. Gatorade on my lips. mud on my knee caps. I think about how much of me were those things and how now I am none of them.
I think about the fact that I would sit and read poetry and write, and I think about the joy words brought me- How I once would see characters and hear voices, and how that wasn't strange, but wonderful....and how I don't hear them anymore.
I think about the fact that I used to rollerblade every morning as the sun began to rise high into the sky. Skates haven't touched my feet in years.
I often feel very similar to Alice in Alice in Wonderland. I am chasing after something I cannot grasp- chasing after time both forwards and backwards- constantly growing and shrinking;constantly changing into something different.
When I was little I was convinced that trees could talk and that when I whispered the wind would hear my words and whisper them to the trees. I wish so badly I could believe that still. I sometimes wish that I hadn't any logic at all, and that I could believe in myself like I did when I was young. I wish I could believe in myself period.
I am insecure. I am raw. I am afraid of the things God wants me to do and I am afraid of failure. I feel a deep desire to write, and yet I am afraid to write what I feel and what I know and what is real. I am afraid of what people will think of me. I am afraid I'm not pretty enough or smart enough or good enough. I am mostly afraid that I am losing myself. I am afraid that I will never hear the voices again- that I will, like Alice, find myself in a Wonderland, only that I will not change back into my original size- that I will stay small forever. But maybe that's part of it...that fear- that lack of self confidence that pushes us to be bigger than what we are and what we think we can do. Perhaps it is the losing of ourself and the finding of ourselves that mold us into one self. Am I pushing that idea? Perhaps I am being too philosophical (If I could even be philosophical to begin with...I have never understood a word Socrates has wrote).
Today I wore bibs and boots and waded in a creek and caught fish and held a snake and ate icecream and am now writing a long run on sentence that would make my mother chastize me severely. I can't help but think that the girl who wore rollerblades would have very much liked today. Maybe I haven't lost myself quite as much as I thought.
