Maritzia’s Thoughts

This entry is for the Weekly Anamnesis.

Surface….

Keep it all under the surface.  Don’t show what you feel.

Don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about!  -smack-

Yelling.  Mom’s angry again.  Hide in your room with the pillow over your head so she can’t hear you crying.

Surface, keep it under the surface, don’t show what you feel.

You love him.  You love him so much it hurts inside.  But he doesn’t know.  You can’t show it.

Surface, keep it under the surface, don’t show what you feel.

You stare down into the casket.  You love this woman.  You hate this woman.  You don’t know what you feel.

But you can no longer keep it under the surface.

Finally you cry.

This week’s Weekly Anamnesis - Illustration.

It’s funny, but I never really thought of myself as unhappy or lonely before I met my husband.  I mean, I did have some sense of dissatisfaction, of wanting something more out of life, but I never really thought of myself as lonely.  And then I met Mark.

He went to Victoria to spend the long weekend with his family.  He left Friday morning and will be back later today.  When I got home Friday, the first few minutes were too busy to really feel the difference in the house.  I had to let the dogs out, since they were cooped up all day while he was gone, and I had to start dinner.  But then I sat down to eat dinner and I was struck by how quiet the house was…quiet, empty, boring…and lonely!

It’s funny that when you live with someone day in and day out that you don’t even think about what it is you do together and talk about all during those days.  If someone asked me what it was we did and talked about, the answer would seem pretty boring, to most people, anyway.  You would think that when the life you spend with someone isn’t that remarkable that you wouldn’t miss them so much when they are gone.

This weekend was an illustration of my life before I met Mark.  I never thought of myself as unhappy or lonely, but now I know I was.  I finally understand just how lonely I was, and just how much joy he’s brought into my life.  Our lives together may not be remarkable or exciting.  What they are, though, is happy.

This weeks entry in the Weekly Anamnesis.  The word this week is Shiver….

So many things can cause us to shiver:  cold, fear, that odd awareness of something otherworldly…

I remember one weekend in Girl Scouts we were going for two different badges:  our Cycling badge and or Camping badge.  We had to have a cycling trip of at least 10 miles to get our cycling badge, and we had to have at least one wilderness camping trip (meaning a place with no facilities) for our camping badge.  For both badges, these were our last requirement.  The weekend was supposed to be nice.  If I remember correctly, it was mid-November, but in Texas, that doesn't mean cold.  Temperatures were supposed to be in the mid-60s all weekend.  We brought winter clothing just in case, but you know how girls are…we didn't overburden ourselves.

The ride out to the campsite was great.  A nice, warm fall day.  The leaves were still dropping, the sun was shining.  I can still remember the look of the last road we went down as we approached the campsite, a dirt road, the path worn into the red Texas clay, dry enough that even our bikes sent clouds of red dust into the air behind us.  Saturday night was great.  Just cool enough to make roasting weanies and marshmallows on the open fire fun.  We all retired to our tents and sleeping bags, exhausted from the day of riding, putting up camp, digging the latrines, and all the other work necessary for putting up the camp.  What we didn't do was listen to the weather report on the radio we brought.  

We all woke up just after midnight…shivering.  Now, I don't mean the little shiver you sometimes get when a cool breeze blows past you.  I'm talking bone deep shivers that make your teeth chatter so hard you're afraid they're going to break.  An Alberta Clipper that was supposed to swing wide to the east of us didn't swing after all.  The high pressure front that was supposed to hold it off slid to the west, and by midnight, the temperature at our campsite was about 17 degrees.  We were all up digging in our packs for the poor excuse for winter clothes that girls in Texas would pack when they weren't really expecting cold weather.  We ended up all of us piling in one tent and making one big bed out of all of our sleeping bags.  The next day, the high didn't get out of the 20s, and we had to ride the 10 miles back in that weather.  I remember my hands on the handle bars so cold I couldn't unbend them from the handles.  I'll never forget just how bone chilling that wind was.  A ride that was just a fun outing the day before was now an exercise in endurance.  None of us wanted to give up.  We knew we'd have to do the trip again for our badge, so we just kept riding, grinding our teeth together to keep them from chattering.

For those of you who have never seen the Weekly Anamnesis (I just found it last week), essentially you are given a word each week that you write about.  I was intrigued and bookmarked it to start following….which is good because this week the word is Follow *grins*.

The truth is, I've never been much of a follower, which is pretty odd considering how much I really want people to like me.  Yeah, I say all the time it doesn't matter what people think of me, but deep down, it really does.  I'm the kind of person who desperately needs approval, especially from those who are important to me.  By the same token, though, I'm also very independent.  Independent enough that I march to my own drumbeat regardless of what people think of me.  So you can see what a terribly conflicted person I am most of the time *laughs*.

It's always been a particular interest of mine, how people deal with those basic conflicts in their personality and in their beliefs.  My sister is a good example.  She loves charismatic church services, but unfortunately doesn't have much in common with the type of people that frequent those places.  She wants to belong to a community of believers, but the people that are drawn to the type of services she likes aren't the kind of people with whom she wants to belong.  At some point, she is going to have to make a choice.  She's tried just trying to get along and keeping her mouth shut, but eventually, she can't stand it, says something totally unacceptable to them and is ostracized for it.  So for years her choice has been nothing.  If she goes to a church and doesn't like the service, she just doesn't get involved.  She hasn't realized yet that the sense of community you may develop can make a big difference in how she perceives and is moved by the service.

As for me, I am just incapable of being a follower.  Even if I start out a follower, at some point I become either a leader or I eventually branch away from whatever or whoever it is I am following.  *laughs* I can't even follow a recipe.  I always end up changing to my own tastes.  I like to experiment.  Maybe that's why my lab grades in chemistry were always low?