My Own Bohemia

Change- an inevitable constant in life that never fails to shake us to the core. To rattle our well oiled lifestyles, to make photos that once brought  memories of sunny summers and reggae music now lie in abandoned frames aquiring dust in your moms backseat.

I watched a beautiful woman with two first names and warm  eyes that see right into my pain look at me in the dim light of my childhood house and tell me that I am in the winter of my life.

That this season comes for us all, and it is cold.

And it is lonely.

And it brings challenges that bring us to our knees and cause us to bawl our eyes out while someone whistles Peter Frampton in a chilly grocery store. Because there used to be someone standing by your side sampling expensive cheeses and teaching you how to order sliced ham.

And now you are standing alone.

And foods that once made your mouth moist with gluttony have lost all flavor.

In winter, she told me, the snow is on the ground.

Even though in Ohio it is a sunny eighty degrees, in my world there are scarves needed.

Gloves to warm my hands because that comfortable certainty I lived with for so long is gone, and my fingers are frigid and frantic and restless and attempting to find solace in long showers and the keys of a keyboard and the pages of a journal.

In winter, she told me, everything is changing.

And while the land seems barren, and the colors seem gone, this is just an illusion.

Because beneath the surface there is life brewing.

There are dancing daisies and laughing lilacs and seductive roses.

There are trees whose leaves will tip toe on the wind and whisper affirmations until the snow melts and I can dance barefoot again.

But before this, I have to embrace my winter.

I have to invite the pain, acknoledge the heartache, forgive my mistakes, love myself the way that I would love the beautiful angels that have been sent into my world to pick me up when I feel too weak to throw on tennis shoes and face the day. Because the sun is shining and the birds are chirping but me- I am still stuck in my winter solstice.

Trying to learn how to ice skate over a diamond lake of emotions that seems permanently frozen.

Trying to transform so that when the sun finally shines again- I am my best self.

My spring self.

I dwell in the world of an overthinker.

A land where a moment of silence can so quickly become a small piece of peace shattered by the constant chit chatter of my mind.

Where solitude becomes something I fear because I can’t sit still- if my feet arent moving I’m not getting anywhere and if I am frozen I am trapped.

Trapped. Stuck.

But am I really?

No. A better word would be grounded. home.

But when there isnt a whirlwind of sound and laughter and lights and music sorrounded me I let the fear sink in.

I let my mind take hold.

I let insecurities leak into the optimism that begins my morning. What started as a mouthwatering lunch at an italian restraunt with a purse full of chocolate mints and a sweet brown eyed waiter and beautiful grandparents in a booth accross from my sister and I asking about our worlds and showing me tin photos of forgotten ancestors in frilly pants has warped into a night on the couch with too much chicken soup and cramps in my stomach and a yearning for someone to walk through the door and take the loneliness away.

Sometimes my own mind is the worst company, I guess that’s why I write.

To quiet my mind, to find that optimistic morning Mallory again.

I guess actually, being alone with myself

it can be an unexpected blessing

Rain, rain go away. Come again some other day.

And in Ohio our grass is craving the return of this crazy, fierce rain we’ve been having.

It’s thirsty and dying and soaking up every drop that sends our Cincy citizens running for their tightly crammed apartments and coconut scented suburban homes.

I pulled into my bank today just so I could stick my head out the window and snap photos of the powerful raindrops staking their claim on our dried out earth. Drenching us in puddles and rainbows and possibilities.

There is something gorgeous about how truely terrifying a powerful storm can be.

But now the storm has died down, and I sit here sipping clearance wine out of a Pier One glass with a deep goblet.

Listening to my boyfriend strum his guitar barefoot on the balcony. Struggling to learn the chords to Tears in Heaven and petting his shaggy dog when his fingers start to hurt.

I live for stolen glances of him like this.

Spent most of the day with soggy bangs running into craft stores and anxiously checking my Iphone for – what? For what? I feel like everyone is always so anxious. Me especially. Checking our phones and our e mails and our facebooks waiting for…. what? Some proclamation of love, some sizzling scandal, some little bit of sunshine that makes us feel loved and valid and existant?

I want the sort of inner peace that demolishes this Iphone Anxiety like the Ohio Grass wants the rain.

The difference is- I can make my peace. The grass can’t make the weather.

I have neglected words for far too long. 

I have turned my back on dusty journals crammed somewhere in a brightly colored box in a carefully cluttered apartment. I’ve walked by them and felt the twinge of guilt that comes from realizing how many memories I’ve left unwritten. I’ve heard their siren call from the confines of my closet and put a pillow over my ears to drown out the sound. The haunting melody that is the stories of my life.

I have deliberatley abandoned the powerful feeling of my fingers marching their way accross the keyboard. Weaving stories of love and loss and lessons learned.

I have let life sweep me away willing, allowing myself to get lost in the ebb and flow of the mundane. The normal. The predictable wackiness that I owe it to myself to document because every second of it is oh so beautiful. Every feeling, every experience, every moment deserves its place in my tattered journals. 

On my poor, rambling blog. 

But why is it when we need words the most, they seem to escape us?

Or is it us, escaping them. 

Filling our mondays and tuesdays and wednesdays with the same simple tasks, promising ourselves we will return to our words tomorrow. Next week. Eventually. 

Perhaps it is because sometimes, our words are too powerful. 

They strike a fear in us that we run from with a determination we didnt know we had. 

Words can lead us to a place we would rather neglect. 

An eden of emotion, 

A paradise of inner contradictions and heartaches and feelings that are messy. 

Sticky, toxic, dangerous.

Terrifying. 

I don’t want to run anymore.

I want to find my words again.