Drawing _________

Pictures:

It’s hard to believe I’ve been working with my kids since July 8th, but there it is: nearly a month has passed and I am so attached to all of them. When I’m not laughing at the ridiculous and, occasionally, creepily insightful things they say and posting it on Facebook, I’m falling in love with each of them as they open up to me, bit by bit. While it’s true that there are a few I’ve specifically adopted (me as a vividly self-aware, self-proclaimed mentor: “Daylon!” “Yes?” “…I’ve taken an interest in you.” “Um, okay.”), finding new and special things to love about each one is the best part of my day. It was a personal triumph when Justin, the quietest and most reserved nineteen-year-old I’ve ever met, turned to me on the scaffolding the other day and said, “Do you read?” Oh my God, is he initiating a conversation with me? Don’t freak out. Act cool, I said to myself. “What, like books, or poetry, or..?” I said, playing it all nonchalant. “Yeah.” Then, an offering: “I’m writing a story about my life right now.”

The mural has almost become secondary. Though the first wall, and now the second wall, in which me and my team have hit our stride, are coming along beautifully, it serves largely as a metaphor of the growing and blooming interactions I see these kids having with each other and with me as their mentor. Gene, one of heads of the program, described me this week as my group’s “foster mom,” and I can’t remember the last time I bubbled up with such pride.

Conclusions:

Channeling my energy into my team and into the fast-approaching date that I get to bring my new Doberman puppy home (Sunday at noon! It feels like Christmas) has helped me give less attention to my own ever-present issues. Anxiety is still a part of my life. So is anger, which is harder for me to stomach.

I was never a person who held onto anger or raged until my two-year engagement to a man who was unable to express emotion, relegating me to expressing all of it, in one, big, messy ball of fury and instability. I thought, when I began to forgive him, that my anger would dissipate, but though I’ve forgiven him (as well as myself, mostly), the addicting and harmful habit of rage has stayed with me.

And under it all, a sadness: the man I now love, the man who I sabotaged a love affair with almost a year ago, has been back in my life since March, but not with me, not the way he was before. Though I know that he loves me, his clinical depression has taken a turn for the worse and he has asked me for space, which I have dutifully given for the last two weeks. The uncertainty of that situation hangs uneasily in the hallways of my mind, lingering in doorways, occasionally slipping into the main room that occupies my waking thoughts. A part of me wants to disconnect, to forget, to try to move on; while that part valiantly attempts a resolution, a certain song comes on, like Bright Eyes’ “First Day of my Life,” and the lyrics fill the space he usually sits and I feel haunted with unease once more.

Though I am getting this dog for many reasons — companionship; unceasing, unconditional love; protection and loyalty; something to do besides manufacture babies — I look forward to pouring my love and attention onto something that needs me as much as I need it. If I can learn to get past anger with selflessness, I will have achieved the most important goal in my life.

Blanks:

I have been twenty-six for nearly a month now, and with it comes uncertainty; certainly, every birthday before this has brought that as well. The difference this time is that I am pleased with the uncertainty. No longer does my Ego push and shove for certainly, for hard-edged lines. I know and accept that uncertainty is what it is. I have stopped planning my life as a timeline, and begun to treat it like a cork board. I post the dreams I have, the things I want to accomplish, the person that I want to be, and as I achieve these things, I pull them off, or I scratch out lines and make arrows to other pages, add my notes, generally shift and change what’s in place. It is a mutable surface, full of options and opportunities.

So I’m drawing a blank here and there. At least I’m still drawing.