Shoe Personality of the Week: 2/07/2011

A friend posted the other day about missing simpler times. I guess everyone many are feeling like this right now. If I were to ask my girl, Star, what’s going on in the world, I’m sure I could get the planetary version of why everything is feeling so effed up right now. I’m worn out.

I remember when I got to an age where I was able to proudly identify when the transition was complete from me handling my business with assistance to [wo]manning my own ship. I’ve been making hard decisions & living the hard sacrifice for a long time. It would seem that, even by my chosen profession, I’ve committed to the hard sacrifice as a theme for my life. Real talk…it’s not feeling like the move. I’m not searching for Utopia but I am wondering when the thumb will be removed from my neck or the boot out of my ass. My older sis once told me that everything ain’t gotta be hard. Well, LeyLow, it appears as though you were wrong on this one. It hasn’t happened often that you’ve told me wrong, but…

Right now I’m listening to police sirens, many of them, in the distance & I know that someone’s life is about to get a whole lot worse. I am not complaining about what I’ve had to do to get where I am or even about where I am, per se. Like with everything, there are certain aspects of my position that suck & are breaking my back. What I’m going through right now is temporary, or at least comes around in cycles, giving me a break at some point. The difficulty is in making it between breaks, feeling like any moment you’re going to crack, & ooze out onto the pavement.

At this very moment I am a series of fissures, in both contexts. I figuratively feel like I’m full of long, narrow lines of breakage, with my sanity overflowing. I am also literally in a state of incompatibility and disagreement. I can’t figure out which is easiest to mend. I’m several tearful sessions into the problem & no closer to a real solution.

& so nostalgia’s back on the menu.

When I was wearing Nike Pegasus, I was playing outside with Jeannie & Phelecia. I had a Cabbage Patch Kid AND a Koosa. I had a science kit that made electricity & my own microscope with slides of really cool stuff. I had a racetrack & an old school desk with a hutch where I sat to do my writing. I jumped rope & walked to school with friends. I found animals & brought them home & rescued baby birds that fell from the nest in our kitchen window. I put on a bathing suit to run through the sprinklers while the gardening was getting done. I collected caterpillars & worms. I’d begin & finish a book in a weekend, hungry for the next. I rode my bike up & down & up & down & up & down the hill. I snuck out the back door to talk to boys. Track & field was my life. My neighborhood was my world & my dreams were grandiose. My life was mapped out in a pink & blue journal with a lock & key. My boom box was my best friend, when I wasn’t actually with my best friend.

Even if I bought a pair of Pegasus today, I couldn’t get any of that back. My memories will have to suffice. To see me through this current rut…I suppose I’ll have to dream new dreams since reality has so drastically altered the old ones.

Watch me move.