Today’s Scintilla prompt…
Talk about a time when you were driving and you sang in the car, all alone. Why do you remember this song and that stretch of road?
sent me back immediately to a moment in time, October 2010.
I was in the middle of two major and intersecting life renovations. Both of them beat me up emotionally and twisted up my sense of identity. The experience (construction of a new room, and construction of four children) created so much noise in my life, any chance of ever being alone with my thoughts felt like its own kind a circus.
I don’t remember the song. It’s incidental to the moment. I do remember the wave of every day longing that echoed across the few brief moments of “me time.”
Here is the post I wrote that day.
Ordinary Rockstar
On Accidental Meetings with Angst
Today I was driving in the minivan across the river, when it hit me.
I needed to screech.
All these letter-perfect songs played themselves out over the speakers all day, telling me that the dull edged blade I was balancing on was tuned just right.
I kept opening my mouth to sing along. But I couldn’t make a sound.
Except to scream at the top of my lungs.
Everybody Hurts. Sometimes.
The most frightening truth I have met while driving around in my life is that no matter how enormous my heart swells, and no matter how many trillions of pieces I feel as though I’ve shattered into, at the end of the day, I see that I am (like you and everyone else), quite simply:
ORDINARY.
I carry around a heavy bridge. I need it for the canyon crossing. On one side is my tall, lanky, rockstar, who says all the right things at the right times and who rolls around in perfect love and desire.
On the other is that stubby, fuzzy-haired suburban housewife. The one I never recognize in the reflection in a store window.
Most of the time, I am pretty good at dispelling the rockstar. I am grounded. I’ve let bygones be bygones. I push down the teased hair and zen out on the soccer field sidelines. I am one with the juice box.
But once in awhile, by accident, something or someone reminds me of the other possibility. The raking hot coals get stoked because they weren’t ever completely cold.
And I look downdowndown. Into the canyon, swaying on the ropey bridge. My knees shudder and melt away.
It’s hard to identify “ordinary” at these moments. Even if I know they are.
A few good rockstar screams help.
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Thanks to the Scintilla Project leaders for great prompts. Read more great stories by popping over to #Scintilla13 on Twitter.
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