In which this is saving me right now

I can't seem to say anything here anymore. Stories crouch on the tip of my tongue, and I swallow them down without sharing. Instead, I scribble shorthand in a journal. I run slow and long while words come together fast and clear and fade as quickly. I am forgetting so much, the cute things they said, the lessons I learned, the poignant holy moments. But it's no longer the worst thing in the world to remember only the essence and not the detail.

Because I'm not on auto-pilot. I'm here, blinking it in. I see the way life unfolds in front of me, sometimes ugly, sometimes gorgeous, always a gift, and I don't have to name it to make it real. I'm here, sometimes full of angst and sometimes of wonder, but full. Always full.

I feel like a traitor to myself when I say I'm tired of words, the way they divide, the way they annoy, the way they add up to so little. Me--the once wannabe writer and the current "words of affirmation" junkie--tired of words? Maybe it's just my own words I'm tired of. As it is, I talk too much and listen too little.

Sometimes I'm foolish enough to think that life isn't quite as disappointing for everyone else, that their existence is as sing-songy and hilarious and amazing and exciting and completely devoid of drudgery as their Facebook updates suggest. I start to think I'm the only one who gets so annoyed with my children (so completely annoyed) that I break my own rule about loud voices in the car by screaming (SCREAMING!!!) at them to be "QUIIIIIET!!!".  I start to I think I'm the only one who leaves the stupid Slip-n-Slide outside to dry in my white trash yard and forgets about until it rains a whole stinking week later, and then gets sprayed in the freakin' face as I race to fold it up. Ok, I probably am the only one who does that. But you know what I mean. Life is always harder than it looks on the screen.

I was offered a consulting(ish) job this past week, and while I knew at once the timing wouldn't work, I let myself dream for a moment what it would be like to have a 9-5 break from the children again. Yes, while everyone else is clicking "Like if you will love your children forever!", I am daydreaming about going back to work so I can get away from them.

I want to get lost in the woods, to walk and run and walk and run for hundreds of miles until I have a unibrow and no idea how truly awful I smell. I want to go off the grid, to find that quiet place where the most solid and vulnerable pieces of me can emerge without threat of being smashed to bits.

Sarah Bessey wrote a piece I just loved about what's saving her right now. At her invitation, I started to write a post about that too, and this is what came out. I guess confession is what's saving me right now. Admission. That I'm screwed up and that my dining room table holds 500 pounds worth of medical journals (that are all online but still somehow cannot be thrown away until the one person in the family who has ZERO time can go through them). Admission. That I'm insecure and impatient and that I only clean the house when my nieces come to babysit because they are used to my sister's standard of cleanliness and I'm afraid of being judged by a 14 and 15 year old.

Really, I'm not making this up. Confession is what's saving me. And maybe it will save you too, to know you aren't alone in the mess and the disappointment, to know that we all need saving.