Standing Tall While Falling Down

Quote of the Day: 

She stood in the storm and when the wind did 

not blow her away, she adjusted her sails.

~Elizabeth Edwards~

Current Local Weather:

Seriously? Again? 

Spring is here. Allergies are here.

Almost dead is here...again.

Currently on my iTunes:

"I Won't Give Up"

Jason Mraz

Currently Reading: 

"Pinterest Savvy"

~Melissa Taylor~

Dear Friends, Family and my Family of Friends, 

      Where am I? Where's Waldo, for that matter...did anyone ever find that creep with the weird shirt that looks like an aftermarket Gap reject item? Actually, he looks like this guy I dated in college that was on the track team. It was a brief romance that started over a bag of purple grapes in the common fridge. I wonder how he's doing these days. I wonder if he's stuck in crowds of people that kinda look like him and is lost. If I could remember his last name, I'd try to find him just to make sure he didn't need finding. 

Anywho, I'm starting to feel as though I no longer know the answer to this question (Where am I?) nor do I really care to answer it with any real platform beneath my words. Instead, I think the more important question is, who the f*** am I? I thought I knew. I thought I was in the middle of resolidifying the answer to this question over the last few months as I've recovered from last year's horrid buffet of physically nightmarish days. But as usual, just as I think it's an answerable question, I forget the answer I had in my head and had studied. 

But most people, when asked who they are, find themselves stuttering and shuttering and shaking while trying to answer it. It's the essay question from hell. 

It's involved, invasive, and impossible. If you can answer your question with confidence, then good for you. I'm happy for you. Write a book about it. I'll rep it. But it has to have the right ingredients. The right voice. The right everything. And if you have the "right" everything in your life, you're probably too busy and too damn happy to write a book. Right? Right. 

Most days, these days at least, I've been WAY too busy to write a book, too. I've been standing tall. Falling down. Waiting on the sky to fall. Waiting on the stars to come to me. Waiting on my real life to begin. Waiting on the doctors to tell me this is all a joke. Waiting on everyone around me to say, ha! we're just kidding. You're fine. This is just a REALLY bad dream. 

Maybe this will happen. Maybe all of you will read this blog and say, ok, joke's up and on us. We need to tell her where she is, who she is and how she can get out of the party house without being ruffied or raped by her own bad health. Someone give her a red Solo Cup full of cheap wine and we'll tell her the truth. 

Unfortunately, there isn't a red Solo cup anywhere near me and none of you are here. At least you're not here in the physical sense of the word. I have no choice but to sit here on my ass in this uncomfortable bed and continue to stand tall while falling down. I have to lead myself through this "ordinary" world of mine and realize that while there is no mapquest or googlable set of directions for the rest of my journey, that I am still here...wherever here is. And ordinary as life can be, it isn't ordinary when it's yours. It isn't ordinary when holding your breath and waiting for the world to move for you isn't working. It isn't ordinary to wait for anything. Or to have the patience to want to wait for anything. It is what it is when it is what it is. 

And just as Jason Mraz sings in his beautiful tune, I Won't Give Up, "Cause even the stars, they burn; some even fall to the Earth." Sometimes you have to burn. Sometimes you have to fall. And sometimes you have to do both to find the Earth of your dreams and the trail you were meant to walk. Even God, Buddha and all their friends will tell you that it doesn't matter how far you are on your journey, it doesn't matter how alive or dead you may feel; you must look up to the stars, the sky, those that have walked that road before you and sit upon their shoulders in order to see the way. 

Does this mean that you're completely set on your journey by looking up instead of down? Does this mean that you're set if you have the world's biggest shoulders to sit upon instead of walking the trail yourself? Hell to the no. You're never going to be "set." If you think you are, think again. If you think you are, just wait. It will happen to you, too. You'll fall while standing tall. It can happen. It does happen. And sometimes, just sometimes, it happens for all the right reasons. We all travel on roads that are long. Roads that have smelly rest stops and no place to rest and roads that need repaving. Unfortunately/Fortunately the roads I'm talking about are our roads. The stars are all the same above these roads even though the places they lead to are very different. 

We all need road work. We all need to continue to stand tall while we fall. Regardless of your health, your place in this world, your perceived needs-vs-wants, your love or lack thereof...you need to look ahead, look up, look around you and watch the stars fall, burn out and shine on your journey. It doesn't matter how you answer your life's essay question. It's subjective, objective and as I said before, impossible. What matters is that you try to answer it with all you have at that moment. God knows, you're worth the world. God and all his friends know that we're all friends in the end and if your journey is different, it's still the same. It's all the same. It's all hard. It's all easy. It's all you need to survive. Keep standing tall while falling down. 

If I can fall this many times...if I can die again and again in my journey and revive in time to catch the next Greyhound to my unknown destination, you can, too. Am I perfect in my wisdom? Ha! Yeah, right. All I know is that all of you, yes, even you, are allowing me to stand on your shoulders and giving me the love and help I need right now. Thank you. I wouldn't be able to walk, stand, type, talk, and/or exist without you. 

And if there's ever any doubt as to how I feel about you, all of you, just ask me. I'll always tell you I love you. Even if it doesn't seem appropriate or right or the right time. Love is always, in my eyes, the right thing at all times. 

Yours in Road Work, Realizing that Bruises and Scrapes Heal and Rousing Yours, Mine and Our Spirit, 

C