here.
in Loved Ones, photography, Thoughts and Feelings
as airport, belgian, belgian waffle, chance, Darby, funny business, geography, Jase, kind, last november, LAX, Mentally, mickey mouse, November, Ollie, orange county, second, sense memory, setbacks, strange kind, waffles
I started the day off right with a Texas-shaped belgian waffle.
I wasn’t sure at first what shape they were going for. And yes, I know, that may have something to do with my poor grasp on basic geography. But see, I’ve only ever seen waffles shaped like well, waffles, or like Mickey Mouse. And this wasn’t either, you know, so it took me a second to land on Texas. Mentally, I mean. I had already landed on Texas the night before.
(man, that was a lot about a waffle)
(but it was shaped like Texas)
But I landed in Orange County instead of LAX this morning, and I had totally forgotten that it was the same airport I had gone to last November, when I needed to get away. And suddenly all those feelings came back to me–not in any kind of force that would knock be back to that state–but still, it was a strange kind of sense memory that I hadn’t anticipated. But the good news is that things are so different now; so wonderfully different from then. This I know well.
And then it just so happened that Ollie and I were left to our own devices for dinner. So we had a nice little one outside.
There was a bee who tried to join us for dinner, too. After two attempted dive bombs on his part (the bee’s, that is), Ollie suggested that we go inside. I asked if we could give the bee one more chance to behave, but if he tries any funny business, we’ll go right inside. Ollie agreed to this and it turned out we gambled right.
Cause we were left to just the two of us again and peace was restored as the bee was no longer in the vicinity.
Darby and I had a rather good time making Jase think that I was still in Houston all day long. He was away on work, and while I was here at their house we kept telling him that the plane was malfunctioning and my flight was cancelled and now I was behind so many people trying to get to LA from Houston that who knows when I’ll actually arrive. Jase was appropriately upset by these setbacks. Darby and I were appropriately cackling over each new text that furthered my hypothetical and sad plight.
Oh, it’s good to be here with Latshaw-West.
Good for the soul.
Oh, and this was kind of funny. While I was waiting at the gate to board my plane, I was in a conversation with a man. We were talking about music or something. Anyway, right in the middle of that, a soft spoken guy asked in broken english for us to please excuse him. We did, and then he quickly explained that he is an artist and had been drawing me and then handed me his rendering of me before he walked away. I thanked him and then glanced at the picture. And it’s the thought that counts, right? So nice.
But man, it doesn’t look a thing like me.
stop time.
in Loved Ones, photography, Thoughts and Feelings
as blowing out the candles, California, cat, David, Delaware, drew, God, Harry, iphoto, lot, North Carolina, north carolina mountains, Ollie, sense, sense memory, story, straight jacket, time
I just went through my pictures in iphoto.
And deleted a lot of them.
It was time.
And it’s amazing how photos can stir your sense memory; amazing how the story is written in the colors and the feel of the images.
And I love to look at this; it’s a good story.
A girl, just turned three, blowing out the candles on her cat cake. It had to be a cat cake, you know. Every year. Maybe this year my mom will make me a cat cake again. That’d be nice.
And this picture.
It says a lot.
Drew had just told me a little bit of the story that would shatter my life, though I still was ignorant of a lot of it. And then we went to one of my best friend’s wedding. I sang a song for them and was about to give a speech. One about love, faithfulness, the joy of covenant.
I was sitting in this room with Drew and I couldn’t see him. Not really, anyway. I didn’t understand where he had gone, though he was sitting across from me. But he might as well have been back in Delaware, while I was in the North Carolina mountains, for all the real relating he was doing.
Oh, but it makes sense now. And so does the fact that after the wedding, he opted to go hang out with some strangers at a bar, dragging me there, rather than spend some quality time with me. I guess it didn’t matter that I had just this last day off from work.
And then this was taken when I was in California.
And I love how it looks like they finally had to just put me in a straight jacket.
Because I felt that crazy.
I didn’t know which way was up or down and the few things that I did still know–family, trusted friends, God, and music–I kept holding onto like it was a lifeline.
But a straight jacket–that could have totally made sense.
And so did the color yellow.
This was a good day.
Darby and I went out to get pedicures. The sun was bright and the sky clear and blue where it wasn’t already crowded with mountains. And we went to eat some food and we talked, which is when I started tentatively talking about life without him. And Darby acted like this was normal, so as not to scare me into realizing the change all at once, I think. She listened and agreed and loved me. And every time I looked at my painted yellow toenails, I felt a little bit happier.
And then I came back East and I couldn’t believe how horrible everything was.
The airport. The christmas decorations. The people who knew me, but couldn’t really know me–not anymore, not after what had happened, I thought.
And a friend just recently told me that he knew something tragic had happened to me the first time he saw me at church, right before Christmas, I guess.
And this picture makes me think of that.
I was walking around like a dead person. My parents wondered if I’d ever be the same again–though they had the wisdom not to mention that to me then. And I didn’t care about much anymore. Life looked like a very long time to be here, and I wondered what exactly I would find to do with all these days that piled up before me like math homework. And I was never very good at math.
But then Christmas happened and a few days later, we went to a museum.
An art museum.
And Lyric and I rode in my parents’ car together and I taught her a song that we proceeded to sing together just about the whole way there. It is one of my audition songs and, goodness, but singing is good for the soul.
And once we got to the museum I remember looking at the art like I’d never seen it before. I remember thinking it was interesting that I had this terrible secret that all of the people around me (with the exception of my family) would never have guessed in a million years. And I remember he called me and my heart hurt so badly that I had to tell him I couldn’t talk to him. And then he said he was sorry and I didn’t understand why he said that because sorry doesn’t look like that. It doesn’t look like any of the stuff he did against me; and even if it did, well, sorry doesn’t mean that much anymore.
And this picture of Ollie is perfect. It was just after Christmas and a group of us were at the mall and there were people I knew there, so I made him duck inside Harry & David’s with me in an attempt to not have to say hello.
And his look just about sums up the way I felt about the situation too.
It totally sucked.
All of it.
