Maybe it's the Season

The past few days I have been feeling like one of those "winter wonderland" snow globes, where it sits for long periods of time on top of your piano, or mantel, with little figures, still, unmoving. There is a stasis to it that nothing short of intended, purposeful motion can shift. But then, someone comes along, and has to shake it up, because that is its purpose. Once shaken, the snow flutters and falls down on top of the snowman, or santa, or whatever life-life little statues are inside it. The world, for those figures, for those few moments, is a madness of uninvited activity. I used to think, as a child, that the snow was welcome. After all, what is a snowman without the swirling madness of white surrounding it. Children LIKE snow. I like snow, too. But I prefer the gentleness of a few flakes now and then, pretty, soft, simple, not the confusion of a whirlwind winter storm unless I'm prepared for it, see it coming, hear the forecast a week ahead of time. Lately, for a week or so, I've felt like the statue in the storm, and some persistently annoying person has felt the need to stand nearby and give the globe a constant, unremitting, shaking. My head is going to explode. There is the storm of feelings regarding C and her Senior year "issues" over college, basketball, school administration, friends, work, gender and life itself. I am far too intertwined in those, not only as the protective, worrying parent, but also as the mirror image and too close for comfort self that I was almost exactly at that age. It's frightening to have to see myself, at an age and time I hated in my life, mirrored daily in my daughter. I cannot separate most days the me that I was, with all those negative, impossible to deal with feelings, and her. I seem to struggle so much to be the parent she needs. I dont' know how to be, because, through her, I'm still struggling with the troubled 17 year old that I was. Then there is the storm of change at work that, although I try to stay out of the worst of those winds, there is no denying that it is going to affect me again, beginning Monday, and lasting ...forever? Through next summer? Who knows. It hasn't been stable for three years, and I do begin to doubt that it ever will be, because I cannot control the lack of stability that other people contribute to my world. Not a huge big deal, but a few of the flakes that have fallen carry that tag. Then there is the homefront, and all it's important emotional issues that have been there for many years now, give or take. I deal, and then I don't deal. I think, and then I ignore. I try, and then I don't. I never quite give up, and I never quite succeed. No homeostasis there. That has become forefront again this week because of other past issues. Those I do a pretty good job, most of the time, of letting go. They are, but they aren't, because they can't and shouldn't be. Should never have been, under my life's circumstances. In another lifetime, maybe. In this one, nope. I know that. OK. Done. Gone. But, then, things happen that can't be helped, things that I have no control over and only fate deals out, and so it probably would have come back to sit on my shoulder and whisper shadowy things in my ear anyway this week, but unfortunately for my psyche, something else connected to my heart, too, and opened that closed dark and lonely chasm back up. It will close again, and it's not a big deal to be examined, and thought about and picked at, but, like a sore tooth in your mouth that you KNOW you should leave alone, but can't, well, that's the most of the swirling storm of emotions sitting upon my shoulders right now. There's just too much to deal with. I can't see through the storm right now. I was given a light in the darkness this morning for an hour. I knew it was there, and I knew this morning I could reach out and ask for it, and I did. It didn't shovel the path in front of me - only I can do that. But it did hand me a light and say, "I'll walk with you until the storm clears, and you can see the path clearly again yourself. And, I will not be far behind, if some idiot decides to shake the globe again." And then he said, "That will be the usual $100 dollars for being your friend for an hour, please." I love that man. Truly I do.