Holding On/Holding Still

Sometimes in life we feel stuck. We drudge through the murky mud of confusion--confusion definitely too muddy and murky to get unstuck.

I've spent much of the past ten years stuck--stuck in fear of moving into all I can be, stuck in refusing to look at life and relationships with a magnifying glass of truth, stuck in failing to lift one dirtied foot from the mire and step in action as a method of moving on.

Sometimes mud on our boots can appear safer than a clean pair of Keds on a mission.

Don't get me wrong about being stuck though. It's not like my life has been on pause the entire time. I have done stuff--finished my masters, now teach English to Freshmen in college, have written a novel.

But this stuckness is a pattern--a pattern of holding on to what is--whether or not the clean after the mud might offer growth, light, love. The mud--it's just too thick.

So I hold on.

I wrote about holding on in my journal the other day. This is how that went:

November 27, 2006

In this moment, my eyes feel like heaters blow inside the sockets drying them out, causing pain. I hear the faint roar of car engines on the highway, of people headed back to their jobs post Thanksgiving. I hear Sunny (my white fluffy dog) moaning and snoring. I hear the faint call of birds through the morning's dark.

I feel my hand on the page of this journal, holding it down, holding it in place, and I think about how I'm always either trying to hold my life still so I don't have to change, or change and get my life to a point where I want it to hold still while I revel in finding what speaks to my soul's essence.

I remember as a little girl when my mom tried to comb my hair or pin up a hem on a dress she was making for me, or measure an outfit against me while in the process of sewing. I'd squirm. She'd say, "Hold still a minute so I can do my work."

But I always had the propensity, the coquettish nature to move around and flirt with my image. Whether attempting to stand still for my mom or while gazing at my image in a mirror or my reflection in one as I passed by, I couldn't hold still. Even in professional photographs of family, I was the one turned in the opposite direction, my head tilted just so unlike anyone else in the picture.

I've been trying to hold still forever, to contain my body's fever and passion and desire. I figured if I held down the page of the journal securely enough or tried to hold myself still for my mother or for a picture or for my life, maybe I wouldn't catch up to what I wanted to be.

So what do I do with all this trying to be still when my spirit wants to splash barefoot in clear streams? I need to let go. Let myself go, my life go. I need to give myself permission to mess up the photograph, to be prissy in front of mirrors, to find that girl in me who couldn't be contained, but somehow, over the years, learned to crave the safety containment offered.

She's in there somewhere. She's not sure what she wants exactly or how it will look exactly, but it will offer a chance for opening to all she is rather than telling herself over and over "just hold still a few more years."