Tag: life

Personal Development

Downpour

Ruby Pipes2 Comments

"Wind Turbines at Sunset" © Adrian S Jones, 2009. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
“Wind Turbines at Sunset” © Adrian S Jones, 2009. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
This isn’t working.

I catch myself flipping through ten different open tabs in my browser. Rechecking my email. Picking up my phone and sending text message after text message. Staring out the window, pacing around the office. I get up and do a circle. Grab a snack, refill my ridiculously gigantic water mug, talk to someone for a minute.

I’m firing on all cylinders. But not in the way that’s helpful. I’m not zoomed in, hyper-focused. I’m not tossing around the same problem and working it from all angles. I’m overwhelmed. I’m fumbling. There isn’t a starting point and I don’t even know what finishing would look like.

Hours go by and don’t think I’ve gotten anything done. Don’t feel like I can form a sentence to explain why that is or what it feels like. The crawling skin and pounding head that beg me to crawl under the desk, curl up, and cry.

There is nothing tragic happening here. Overall I’m pretty good. Nothing much to complain about. I sleep hard through the night. But my brain is trying to stretch itself out in every direction. Clawing at the inside of my skull, hoping to find a rough surface to latch itself to.

Traction.

Always looking for traction. I can make the lists. I know the things I want to do, but I have no sense of slow progression. I am a conveyor belt. Want to churn through everything as soon as it is set in front of me. No time for it to dry around the edges. There is urgency everywhere, for everything.

Just get it done. I don’t want to think about it anymore. I don’t know how to just let it sit. Let the pot simmer on the back burner and come back to it. There’s too much I want to spend my time on to offer any of it any room to marinate.

Move.

I like to think I could learn to give myself some leeway. Settle into the idea it’s okay for things to take time. To figure out how to be okay with things sitting. Undone. To let them be without letting them unravel me.

Personal Development

Milkshakes

Ruby Pipes2 Comments
"Paper Tree Imitates Real Tree" © Theen Moy, 2014. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
“Paper Tree Imitates Real Tree” © Theen Moy, 2014. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

My yoga teacher gives instruction as if he is reciting poetry. He plays music and falls into rhythm with it, his voice adjusts in volume with the intensity of the pose. As we exhale into position, he gets louder. Brings the lights up a little bit, mimics the sunrise happening through the windows. The practice he guides us through feels like a steady drop of water on my spine. Slow and with purpose it etches away the previous day. The night of tossing and turning.

I make it a point to talk to him. To the other people in my class. While we change from our stretchy clothes into our work attire in the bathroom I strike up conversation. Make eye contact. We don’t need to bond or learn names. I just need to know that I’m noticed so I can remind myself if I don’t show up someone will feel my absence. Keep creating new places you matter. That’s the trick. That’s all it is.

When I was a teenager my idea of “sneaking out” was leaving a note for my parents on my desk and exiting through the front door. There were no tiptoes, just gentle motions to avoid waking those already asleep. A respect for their rest more than an intent of secrecy. If anyone went in to check on me they’d find something like:

George is having a bad night.
Went out for food.
Back soon. Love you!
—Ruby (1 AM)

on a Post-it® note. But I don’t know if anyone ever did. No one ever said.

It soon felt like I could float in and out of my home unnoticed. A gradual shift in temperature or humidity. Barely detectable among everything else that was happening under that roof. I found different places to matter.

George had driven up from Salem on accident. Another soul who understands that when nothing makes sense you pick a direction on Interstate 5 and you just go. We talked on the phone for most of the drive. When he finally said, “Okay, I’m here,” I had my coat and shoes on before he could add, “Come out.”

He didn’t pull into the driveway. I walked out into the quiet, country road night and folded myself into the passenger’s seat of his Toyota Tercel. We drove another thirty minutes north to the set of diner’s open twenty-four hours. The age-old debate between Denny’s and Shari’s ensued and we settled on the place with the better shakes.

Chocolate for me. Strawberry-banana for him. I likely ordered stuffed hash-browns (no bacon) and he definitely got a veggie omelette. We talked about music, about school, about relationships. We did not touch on how hard existing is. Sometimes you just need someone to sit at a table with. To notice you’re present. To witness your heart still beating hard in your chest.

Autobiography

Somewhere Easy

Ruby Pipes3 Comments

"left alone" © Marco Monetti, 2014. CC BY-ND 2.0.
“left alone” © Marco Monetti, 2014. CC BY-ND 2.0.
Two men slide into the office as the day is winding down. One approaches the desk slow, head down. The other skips up and slides to the right, pointing to his friend with both arms and a leg, “HE’D like to take a look around PLEASE!”

Our office is silent and my laugh bounces off the corners of the ceiling.

“You like that?” His giggle joins mine as we nod our heads at each other. Placing a hand to the corner of his mouth, he leans toward me and whispers loud, “He’s shy.” He draws out the end of the word to insure his friend hears him.

The other man blushes and toes the ground, tilts his head down more, and hides his eyes behind the bill of his baseball cap. I wait until he looks up again, lock eyes, and smile.

Some people are just easy to be around.

During the great breakdown of November 2008 I stood on my parent’s back porch and smoked with my dad. He reached in his wallet—exhaling a cloud of cigar smoke and warm breath into the chilled air—and pulled out a credit card. He pressed it into the palm of my hand and I curled my fingers around it, tilting my head to one side and raising my eyebrows. “What’s this for?”

“Take your time, but get home safe. Always make sure you can get home.”

I pointed the hood of my Toyota Corolla down Interstate 5, headed south. This was back when I could do the drive from southwest Washington to Tucson, Arizona with only a quick nap around Sacramento. In less than twenty-four hours I’d crossed fifteen-hundred miles. I stood on a doorstep, everything I owned in a black duffle bag at my feet, and knocked.

Bryan opened the door and pulled me inside quick. “RUBY!” He held out his hand in a fist, palm down. I mirrored his gesture, extending mine open and palm up. Pills. He picked a bottle of André brut champagne up off the coffee table and handed it to me. After I’d taken the X and pounded enough of bubbly he gave me a hug.

Colton stayed seated, but gave me a toothy grin, eyes crinkling, and kicked his head back in greeting. “Good to see you, kiddo.”

They didn’t beg me to fill them in on what was going on. Didn’t hammer me with questions about the unfaithful boyfriend I’d left with a half-empty house and a broken lease. Didn’t ask me what I planned to do now that I’d dropped out of college for the second time. Didn’t demand I tell them about all these doctor appointments and consultations with surgeons.

Instead they asked if I would be moving in. Told me how they could rearrange the apartment to accommodate all three of us once I had decided.

Some people are just easy to be with.

My co-worker gives the two men a tour of our space and I stay seated at the front desk. The mid-February sunset streams in through the big open windows. I catch myself squinting in the once-again silent office. There is always somewhere safe, but you never know where it will be.