On Thursday, I stumbled through the day with a life that didn't fit. It was too small. I kept tugging at the edges of it trying to get it to cover me. Life screamed back, "Fat chance."
Tears threatened my eyes. I've been working so hard to maintain the proper positive attitude, to keep a "stiff upper lip", to display grace under pressure. None of that seemed to matter. Here I was walking around with a life that didn't feel right, a life that just would not fit. What was I doing wrong? Why was it the wrong size? When did this happen? How long has it missed my noticing? Questions without answers on a rainy Thursday.
I tried to blame the rain, my hatred of the wet and the damp. When it rains, I'm transported back in time. I stand on a crowded city bus, my arms heavy with books. No one offers me a seat. Clinging to the strap, I do an awkward two-step struggling to keep my balance. The other passengers stare ahead, their faces frozen masks betraying only mild disdain for the rainy world outside the bus windows. Their wet coats and hair smell like a wet pack of wild dogs. Every time it rains, I warp back through time and space and smell the raw smell of wet humans. It never makes me smile.
A constant cloud hovers over me. It haunts my day. I feign interest in the world outside me. I'm only pretending. My life feels too small. I don't want anyone else to see me wearing this ill-fitting life. Frantically, I scuttle around, trying to find a place to hide, someplace quiet, dark, safe. Nothing. I am exposed for all the world to see. I doubt the world will be kind. Already it feels terribly cruel.
I carry this feeling around for several days, like a heartache. This morning I escape for my Just 10 walk. The trail is oddly quiet and when I meet fellow travelers. There are no familiar faces. My loneliness is underlined and printed in bold letters. Scenes from my week flash across my mind. I attend freshman classes with my student charge. He is almost mute. I study him, reading his body languages. He has two areas of interest. I gently wedge my foot in the door. Slowly, I'm beginning to get through. He is getting used to me. He tolerates my presence. He even looks to me for rescue at times, yet he has enough awareness to be embarrassed by me. He doesn't know how much I can identify with him. Apparently, while in the womb, I brushed up against the stone of Aspergers. The chalky grit of its genes latching on to my DNA. I see my own childhood, my adolescence under a microscope.
On Friday, we find ourselves at a mandatory pep assembly. My student is a frozen statue. So was I at his age. I hated pep assemblies with a passion. Why was all this noise and stupid behavior expected of the young. Why didn't I feel what the others all seemed to feel? I felt embarrassed by my peers and at the same time desperately wanted to feel what they felt. My soul was an icebox. I was hopelessly lost in myself and very afraid. My life didn't fit then either.
Adolescent was insanely hard on me. Miserable and afraid, I became a cutter before I had any idea of what that was. I thought I was the only one who eased the pain of being me by carving into my skin with a razor blade. I desperately wanted to feel something even if that something was pain. Trapped by responsibilities and expectations, I isolated myself on an island of one. I look at my student on Friday. He, too, sits on island of one, a different island than mine but still alone. Friday, I realized how smart he was under all that silence. I began to understand what traps him there. He needs help building a raft. There is a world out there that he has to live in. He needs to learn to survive while honoring himself and his unique view of the world.
I left the house this morning wearing an extra large shirt to hide my too-small life. As I headed home from a walk where everyone was a stranger wearing a new face, I looked up to the foothills in the east. They beckoned me toward them, a magnetic pull on my iron heart. "Come walk in our forests, wade in our streams and see what's on the other side. A new chapter begins." I struggle to let go of the old, of the familiar. I struggle to get used to the new fit and feel of my new chapter. I have felt this before. In time, things will get easier. Purpose and meaning will fall out of the chaos of the new and unknown. The feelings of uselessness and frustration of early this week, fell aside somewhere on the trail this morning. Life may be the right size after all.
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