Where am I?

So, it's February. Oh, time.

An old friend of mine, Brad, used to yell at me every time I made a comment about how time feels like it's flying by so fast. "Time never goes faster or slower," he'd argue. "Time is just arbitrary numbers we give to to sunsets and sunrises." Which, yes, it could be true.

I hear there are people in the world who argue that time as we know it isn't really a straight line that we imagine it being, that it twists and curves and folds in on itself, and that's why when we look back at our memories we sometimes have trouble remembering what came first in any sequence of events to lead us to where we are now, at whatever particular moment in time. 

Sometimes I wish there were more hours to a day, or that sleeping wasn't necessary - at all. As much as I hate to leave the comfort of a warm bed on a cold morning in winter, a bigger part of me always resents that moment in the wee hours of the morning when I have to tell myself that it's time to lay down and give up the day, and it always pisses me off, because very infrequently do I feel like I've done enough with the hours I had, or at least did enough of the things I wanted to do with them.

This blog, I'm not using it like it should be used. I'm not saying the things I should be and want to be saying because within all of us there are secrets and in my case they can't be given up, even though I'm coming to realize that one of the secrets I am keeping is shaping my life into something I don't understand and haven't been able to come to terms with. 

What things do you hold on to and what do you give away? What does it mean to be authentic in a place where you are still constantly admitting that you are a secret keeper because some things just can't be discussed online or with anyone else in your life? And really in the end, what does that matter?

I could tell you about how this morning as I was walking in to work there was shattered glass in the parking lot, and the clear shards I stepped around twinkled in the sun and momentarily blinded me, and I was half annoyed and half amazed that trash really can be beautiful. I could tell you that I have listened to Britney Spears pretty much non-stop today and her music does more for my mood than chocolate or sex put together. I could tell you that in the last week I've panicked over my financial situation, and that I am not proud of the fact that the only snacks Elise has to take to school right now are string cheese sticks and baggies of mommy's cereal, and that we've eaten pasta with butter and cheese for days on end because putting gas in my car to get to work takes precedence over grocery shopping, and the cost of milk and fuel only rises. 

I could tell you anything, is my point, and I usually don't because I am hiding behind this wall of fear. Fear like I've always had as a writer on the internet - of being rejected by people who know me. Fear of being considered a fraud or a fake, because even if those things aren't true, they are impossible to defend against when you don't have a posse to back you up, to explain things to people who don't understand.

I don't know where I am now on this life journey we all have going on, but I'm starting to understand, slowly and painfully, who I am. That's something.