Awful wonderful or how I tried to not breath so fast

I feel like the greatest idiot on the planet. It's been about two or three hours and I still can't sit down for too long. My heart is racing and I keep wanting to jump like a jack rabbit in heat. "Shit!", - yeah,that comes out once in a while, as well. I am happy, very much so, maybe just as much as I am embarrassed and wanting to feel awful or not feel anything at all. Shit. I prayed a few times and cried with remorse. It must be sick. I can't even share.

Catching up

They ask, 
I hesitate,
Then I say,
"I have it done."

I'll do it tonight.

 "I know how to do it."

I'll need to figure it out.

"I'm there"

What is the address again?

I am.

I'll be who I am...not.

I'll catch up with the lie.

Am I being honest?

My secrets

My friend recently shared an article from the Guardian about a nurse, who while working for years in palliative care, recorded her patients' regrets during their last days of living. Apparently, the most common one could be summerized as "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

This made me think. A lot. I'm spending my spring break observing the Holy Week.

I spent the entire year before we moved away for my new job, attending an Orthodox church 45 minutes away from where my husband and I resided at the time. Besides spending there almost every Sunday morning and early afternoon, we would go for Vesper's services on Saturday nights. We got so involved that I started singing in a choir there, granted after spending months working up a nerve to do that. By then my husband has been contributing his musical talents rather regularly. During the Holy Week last year we fasted, attended all the matins for that week, only drank liquids for three days, and even spent the night at church reading at an all-nigh vigil. For someone having lived in a bible belt, this probably wouldn't qualify for too over-the top religious. The catch is, almost nobody I knew outside of church had the slightest clue of anything described above. I carefully crafted what I say about my day with my parents to avoid mentioning that we spent the entire weekend, doing something church-related. With most of my friends, this was never a topic for a conversation.

I remember somebody tagging me on a facebook picture that showed me in our church. It was almost like coming out of a closet. I wondered what my parents would think, if any of my friends would draw surprised looks. Nothing happened, though. No unwanted questions. Life went on.

I don't want to portray myself as somebody that I'm not.

Something is broken. It's like when you sense something wrong, but can't define it. You peel away variables one by one, until you get to the layer that makes all the difference. I wonder if any of this makes sense. 


If I dedicate so much of myself to that place, the church, why is it such a secret that I'm there, with the people I love?

Not your mama

My parents were so lucky. They didn' have to agonize over complications of having a baby, weighing the costs and benefits, fearing of the unkown. They just had me when they were young. Or at least that's what it seems.

I'm getting older and closer to the age when most women have their first child. Mid 20's, while the risks of pathology aren't high and mother's body is generally healthy. I feel like I'm a type of person who, if given a chance, needs plenty of mental preparation for such changes in life. It's so damn scary though. My husband is fine. I can picture him as a dad even now. But what about me? I never see myself being worthy of rearing a new life. At least not now.

 I curse. I occasionally have pretty severe mood swings, depression. I spend way too much time at work and am terrible at managing my time. I'm a lousy housewife and selfish to consider post-natal effects on my body. Sitting in the library, I look at a man with a little girl. She eats there and speaks loudly while, what appears to be her dad, is barely keeping up with the whirlpool of her questions. With all of its inappropriateness (girl's food and noise) this looks cute and makes me feel better.

I wish I could share with my parents that I'm afraid to have kids. I have kids in my class, who are like my own kids, but I can never imagine being fully and completely responsible for their lives. It would seem like too much. Would I ever be good enough. One thing I remember my dad once said is that it's surprisingly no that easy to mess a kid up. They are more resilient than I might think. Hope he's right.

What was written on the undersides of tables

I knew more things in the first ten years of my life than I believe I have known at any time since. I knew everything there was to know about our house for a start. I knew what was written on the undersides of tables and what the view was like from the tops of bookcases and wardrobes. I knew what was to be found at the back of every closet, which beds had the most dust balls beneath them, which ceilings the most interesting stains, where exactly the patterns in wallpaper repeated. I knew how to cross every room in the house without touching the floor, where my father kept his spare change and how much you could safely take without his noticing (one-seventh of the quarters, one-fifth of the nickels and dimes, as many of the pennies as you could carry). I knew how to relax in an armchair in more than one hundred positions and on the floor in approximately seventy- five more. I knew what the world looked like when viewed through a Jell-O lens. I knew how things tasted—damp washcloths, pencil ferrules, coins and buttons, almost anything made of plastic that was smaller than, say, a clock radio, mucus of every variety of course—in a way that I have more or less forgotten now. I knew and could take you at once to any illustration of naked women anywhere in our house, from a Rubens painting of fleshy chubbos in Masterpieces of World Painting to a cartoon by Peter Arno in the latest issue of The New Yorker to my father’s small private library of girlie magazines in a secret place known only to him, me, and 111 of my closest friends in his bedroom...

(Bill Bryson, "The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid")