Truth in words, in rhymes and notes..in all the things I wish I'd wrote.

Well, firstly you must know that I survived the classic case of "The Encroacher."  Just when you think you have solidified yourself a safe, comfortable seat for the flight...this person rolls in and dominates your space.  They are usually an aggressive female or machismo male.  As if they are a cockatoos--puffing up and showing you just how much space they can successfully take up.  I was too tired to passive aggressively reclaim my personal space with accidental elbow jabs and elaborate, space consuming bag searches.  As he took over the arm rest and most of my seat, I retreated into the corners of my window seat, clinging to the wall like a lizard.  I somehow fell asleep in this pretzel-esque position for an hour (thank you Bikram yoga for all your lessons in contortion).  I woke up to the little girl behind me, caught up in her excitement, smashing her legs into the back of my seat. You know you work with kids when their laughter and screaming actually makes your soul smile.

 It was really refreshing to see the airport so crowded with families and laughing children.  After I got off the flight/nap session, I stopped at the local coffee spot--picked up a San Francisco worthy chai and three magazines (Cosmopolitan, Self, and Women's Health).  I wondered if the woman behind the counter was trying to predict which magazines I would select...Nathan lovingly informed me that girls who look like me aren't usually nice...so I was left to believe she thought I would be a vapid US or People subscriber (no offense).  Or maybe, thanks to my Hunger Watch 2010 figure, my skim milk substitute and fitness magazines suit the profile.  She probably didn't even think about me.  It's hard for me to believe that not everyone is psychoanalytic, obsessive, and lost in a series of mostlyunimportantbutslightlyinteresting musings.

I have successfully been left with my own thoughts for almost 7 hours.  I haven't had a conversation with anyone but my mother all day.  I thought only of "the event" once when I saw a man who walked the way he did...that disturbing body stance that seems uncontrolled and volatile, like a bomb waiting to go off.  You know the guy, the one who is walking as if all he wants to do is punch someone in the face? (we've all probably been there at some point...except this guy always has a distinguishing look of mania in his eyes).  The one thought that I can't shake is the idea that at any point--someone could just start beating the crap out of me because they felt like it.  This is probably why I need to talk to someone more educated on  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD..I'm acquiring titles to encapsulate my problems). This too shall pass.  I decided while I was waiting at the airport that I would start running at night again.  It's my way of giving a proverbial middle finger to the event and psychopaths.  I think at this point, I would be so pissed that it was happening again that I would inevitably kick some ass.  Do you think I could do it? Or do you think I would be running, quickening my pace, convinced someone was chasing after me? Perhaps I'm not a real lioness at all and merely the cowardly lion, hiding behind what I think I should be like.

Anyway, back to the beginning--I did have a pseudo conversation--I had an internal monologue with the book i'm reading Eat, Pray, Love.  This book has become a mirror of my current state: it holds pages of answers to questions I'm too afraid to ask myself sometimes.  I feel like she wrote a book I easily could've written...minus the messy divorce and dysfunctional affair with a younger man.   The main point of the novel is acceptance of who you are and who you are not.  This simple idea has filled up hundreds of blogs of mine, an ongoing project--a work in progress.   Here's a passage that is now marked up, well loved, and dog-eared:

I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all.  It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated.  The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.  Yesterday  I might have been a glorious monument to somebody,  true enough--but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository.  Even in the Eternal City,  says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.