Raw

 Sometimes I just feel so raw. Without skin. Without a center. It happens around people I know and love. It doesn't often make sense. It's a sense of lonely disconnection. I felt it last night at book club. So many thoughts about the book but then here we are in a tiny corner of a bar and it's hard to get a word in edge wise. Is this real? Why do I feel like I have to interrupt to say anything? 

It's no one's fault and everyone there is wonderful. So, what's my deal? 

I feel unable to articulate all the thoughts I wanted to share and the sheer volume of what we are not saying feels so heavy and burdensome. 

It's just stuff in my head. Like maybe try being lighter and more joyful or just say what you want to say, I did try. 

I ordered a ginger beer which was sweet and delicious but these hole filled spaces in my psyche are exactly what I crave to fill with a glass of wine or two, yes definitely two. 

There are these energies swirling inside and then I can tell it's blocking connection which I then am self-conscious of and connection is indeed blocked. 

Wine wouldn't really have helped. It would have juiced me up a bit but I know the pain I was feeling underneath would only scream for more of it. I would have ordered two drinks for sure. Then, when I got home I would have rummaged around the kitchen for something sweet or salty or both. I would have sat on the couch with food and scrolled Facebook or Instagram.  And, then.. then I would have gone to bed feeling vaguely guilty. 

Guilty that book club someone became a drinking and eating splurge instead of book club. The numbing would have worked and I am none the wiser. 

Instead, I drank a lot of ice cold water at the bar from a carafe that no one paid much attention to. I slipped my fingers into salted marcona almonds and pricked at least four chartreuse green olives with a citrusy flavor. I tried to listen and share as we all moved away from the book and towards our own lives. 

Our high school children, our teens, and daughters. 

I came home to my own teens. Zealand wanted a white shirt for homecoming game. I went to Target with Avery. I came home with a shirt that had a pocket. I forgot he hates pockets. It turns out they are supposed to wear black. 

His app on his phone isn't working for his football and homecoming dance tickets. We shared tense words. I am tired, so tired. 

He wants to go to the dance with friends I don't know. Not the friends whose parents I know. I would feel so much better if he and we had plans. Life feels okay then. There is so much security in that. I am not even sure if he has real plans or real friends for that matter. 

Back to raw. It's life. It's ordinary.  Book clubs. Trying to share ideas, trying to share recognizable snippets from our own lives. To illuminate what we read. To say something about our own minds and thoughts. To be seen. To see. To understand. How is Zealand doing someone asks. 

I say fine. And, yet so much underneath, raw. It's lonely. It's lonely until you make a story. But even stories can feel like only stories. Can they be trusted. Stories of ourselves and our loved ones can feel lonely too. They cause us to compare and wonder if we have also have such a nice story too. And so on.

I thought of this as I swirled the last bit of sweet from the ice cubes in my tall glass.