day four

Editing some older stuff...I don't really know where this was going, but I'm working on it.

***

"The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout..."


You know, the heart is a funny thing. We go along, living our life, and little things rip and tear at it, leaving us cuts that sting in the oddest of times. For instance, when I was a young girl, about ten or eleven years old, my dad thought it was a funny joke to point out that my sister and I were gaining weight. Now, mind you, we were growing girls, and we were gaining healthy weight like any girls our age were supposed to be. But, somehow, my dad made it seem like it was an abnormality, like he was making fun of us.

“She’s a big girl!” he would say. “She’s a big girl now,” and slap us on the butt. This used to mortify me.

Now, I’m 27 years old, but that memory finds its way to the front of my feelings at times when I wish it wouldn’t. When I see a diet commercial, a magazine cover advertising "10 guaranteed ways to get flat abs," a meal set in front of me that I’m supposed to enjoy. It comes when I least expect it, re-opening the cut as I try desperately to slap on some make-shift stitches, just enough to hold my tears in and my composure together before it begins to bleed out and seep through, staining my patch-worked life I’ve tried so hard to sew together.

I think that’s how most people live – quilting everything together just so, becoming experts with stitches like spider webs, needling over the things we really feel. But as soon as we tie that last heart-thread, don’t we soon realize how weak our webs really are, and what we really need is surgery instead of stitches?

Well, we either realize it or keep running away. I ran for the longest time until I figured out I didn’t have a clue where I was going.

Spiders are the masters of needle and thread. They build their webs at night, and those same webs get destroyed every morning. They do this, day in, day out. If you’ve ever observed a spider for too long, you know how hard they work. All that spinning just to catch one measly bug.

To them, though, it’s survival. But for us, we’re just spinning webs over wounds that eventually will spill out and infect everything about us if we’re not careful, if we don’t just slow down every once in a while and realize we’re going nowhere with our rotting silk. The only good thing all that running and spinning and sewing does is tire us out so bad we’re forced to sit down, sip some water, and deal with ourselves.

For some people, it takes a big disaster for them to realize the spider web heart way of things doesn’t work, that trying to just stitch things over doesn’t make them better. Things have to be beyond control to snap them into an awakening that they need something bigger.

And a lot of times, it happens so fast. Everything seems to be going along just fine, the bleeding of the cuts is at bay and the webs have returned to functioning, ready to catch the night’s supper, when, all of the sudden, one earthquake comes and rocks the whole world.

For me, I heard the words “big girl” on TV, saw a tabloid of Lindsay Lohan's eating disorder, looked down at my shuffling feet at the end of pants that were falling off my bony body, when I suddenly realized I was right there along with Lindsay. All the strings in my heart began to unravel and dissolve, letting out pain I was trying so hard to keep in.

No, no, my mind screamed down to my heart, but the stubborn thing wouldn’t listen. It was too late – everything began seeping out. I wiped my eyes and hot tears began to brand me like blood.

I was at my friend Lauren's house. Unaware, she asked if I want anything to eat. Her words felt like a giant foot, crushing my perfectly spun silk.

“I could go for ice cream,” she said, absorbed in her own world of People Magazine.

The foot shifted all of its weight on top of me, and I found it hard to breathe. There they were, all of my patchwork webs, ripped apart before me, deflated.

“Um, I think I’m just going to go,” I said, getting up, walking out the door before she could catch me.

“Tuesday!” Lauren called out after me. I didn’t turn around.

The heart is funny, like I said. I realized I was going no place but kept sprinting off anyway. Like this time, maybe this time, I’d re-patch my shell of pain good enough to cover me for the rest of my life. I started my car and drove off.

How many crushing feet would it take for me to realize the heart wasn’t meant to operate this way?


"...down came the rain and washed the spider out."

***