I don’t want to wear it on my sleeve

Today has been one of those soul-searching what-the-heck-is-going-on kind of days.  It started out as so many Sundays have in the past few months…took a combination of the niece/nephews (this time it was the boys) out to breakfast.  I fully intended to go apartment shopping, but I found that I just couldn’t.  I am emotionally wiped out right now.  I canceled a lunch date for apartment shopping that never happened.  (Sorry…)

So, I took the boys for breakfast at the train station (a local breakfast/lunch joint in an old train station.)  The food was good and the conversation…yeah.  I was with two boys.  I asked a lot of questions and they answered in a monosyllabic fashion.  I dragged them to Starbucks for my caffeine fix.  We met a clown named Jo-Jo who made their day by turning a block of styrofoam into a dragon.  They talked about it for the rest of the day.

After we got back, I read a little, then decided to tan.  I came home and got ready and went to the movies to see Made of Honor.  That could turn out to be my life, less the Scottish duke and castle.  Then I went out for some sushi and more Starbucks. 

While I was driving, I got to thinking about so many things…where I am, where I am headed.  What I want for my life, what I thought my life would look like, what it is looking like.  The theatre, sushi spot and Starbucks are all in Voorhees, where I spent a good deal of two years of my life.  When I was driving around there a few years ago, I was so sure of what I wanted out of my life.  I thought that I had it all worked out.  Then something happened, and the house of cards I had created in my mind got blown over.  I find myself on the other side, wondering how I had gotten so deeply involved in something that, in retrospect, was not really mine to be involved in.  I am not the person who can just show up for a few hours and be barely involved  I am the person who throws herself fully into whatever it is that is going on. 

Now, I find myself in a similar situation.  I put all of myself into things.  I go for it at 150%.  But, it seems that I am only supposed to give a little.  I can’t pull back.  It’s not who I am.  But I can’t keep going at 150% because all it’s getting me is frustration. 

I used to be the person who wore church (notice I said church and NOT Christ) on her sleeve.  In the dictionary, there could have been a picture of me next to the definition of church freak.  As I was driving through Voorhees, all of my zeal came back at me like a freight train.  It was at this store that I bought the duct tape for my trip to Florida.  Here is where I used to get coffee before and after church.  Here is where I had that lunch where my heart was torn out of my chest. 

Wow.  How did this blog get here?  As I was driving, I decided I refuse to wear anything on my sleeve.  I prefer to live my life in a certain way.  In such a way that people know who I am, know my values, without me telling them.

So, that is where we are, and how we got here.