Finding Forty, Day 145; Dust

I'm falling out of love with my blog.   More and more it feels like a chore to me, but I can't figure out why.  My love for writing  hasn't diminished.  I think it's just that I feel trapped here too,  much like I do in the rest of my life.

I know the track to what I *should* say and feel, but most days, I'm somewhere off the beaten path.  I don't want to confess things here for fear of disappointing or sounding like a broken record.

Beating the proverbial dead horse is my specialty.  

So, I shy away.   What more is there to say really?

I've had many thoughts of late, but none of them resolute or powerful or enough to change my life, or so it seems.

I can't find a place anymore that brings me peace.  It used to be my classroom, but this year is so weird and different from last year, that I can't quite get comfortable there.   Sometimes I think it's home and oddly enough, I was happy tonight cooking dinner.  Bizarre.  Cooking rarely, if ever, makes me happy.

And even though A and I had talked on the phone today about very serious things, there seemed to be a break in our tension.  That is, until he came home.

As soon as he walked in, I felt myself bristle.  I can't explain it, which is one of the reason's I shy away from here now, but he just irritates me.    The way he looks at me too long to gauge my expression, the way he makes such noise when he eats (even with his mouth closed), the way he tries to tell me about something he heard on the radio on the way home but doesn't explain WHY it happens to be important to him,  the way he only half way listens to me.

And yet, more than once today, he told me on the phone how nice my voice sounded. 

What?

I'm just confused.

Tonight, while looking for some drawings that youngest son did a few years ago, I stumbled across a box of old photos.   Talk about stirring the emotions and pulling the heartstrings.

Years ago, I must have had a camera tethered to me, much like a baby wears their pacifier on their bib or a librarian keeps her reading glasses around her neck.  Picture after picture emerged of A with our oldest son in all sorts of amazing, touching scenarios.   Also present were pictures of my mom, her wrinkled, smiling face peering at my lens.  I can feel her softness and smell her smell, even tonight.  

There was even a picture of S in the mix.   It was a snapshot taken at a wedding shower hosted for me and A, and there in the picture we all stand, smiling.  My best friend, S, A and me, another dear friend and my mom.   Who would have ever known 19 years ago that the two loves of my life would share frame time, as well as deep, profound, forever places in my heart?

I wasn't trying to dig in the past.  I was looking for drawings, which, by the way, continue to elude me.  I'm tired of the past.   Tired of who I was and all the reminders of who I'm not anymore.   Tired of seeing faces of lovers smiling at me, precursors to the pain and hurt we'd all suffer at one another's hands.

I'm tired of not knowing and worrying and being afraid.  Most of all, I think on many nights, I'm just tired of being tired.

Lately, my happy place is my bed.  At least, for the most part, when I'm sleeping I don't have to worry about pleasing anyone, including myself.    I don't have to face anything other than my subconscious and lately, that's been tolerable.

The pictures are put away.  The only thing stirring still is the dust I roused.  Well, that and my heart.  The dust will settle soon, but what of me and my feelings?

I'm not so sure.