Thoughts

The morning sun was sliding slowly over the mountain's ridge, dispersing the mist of the early morning with it's light golden glow.Yet again today, the sun was bringing no solace with its rising.

The sky looked like it was going to graduate into the same beautiful blue that only comes in the Spring.

It is the color of sky that tricks her mind into thinking that it is as warm outside as it looks.

She knows that this is the season's grand illusion, and prepares herself against it's trickery.


After the house is empty for the morning, she knows full well there is work enough to be done, but she just can't concentrate on that. Her mind is racing on hummingbird wings, from thought to thought and back again before darting off in a different direction then darting to a new territory before coming back again, completing the constant internal loop of her frenzied thought patterns of late.

Leaving the house and its work, along with the suffocating confinement behind, she drives to the new walking trail by the small lake that she likes on day's like this. The day's that she can't run from her inner dialog, when it takes on that accusing giant's relentless finger poking in her face, reminding her of all she "should have done", "could have done", "didn't do", and "will never be good enough for's". Followed closely on the heels by those dreaded 'what if's', 'Why me's', and 'What do I do's'...

Quickly reaching 'her spot' she pulls the car into the first yet farthest parking stall, shuts it off and just sits and listens to the silence that fills it's warm interior.

There go the thoughts crashing in on the momentary peace.

Grabbing up her gear she goes into a whirl of activity that ends with the door opening like some sort of escape hatch.

Noticing as she steps from the car that there are not many people out as early as she. Her mind jumps on this and starts in on, 'I should have called one of my friends to come with me..' squelching that thought quickly by turning on her Walkman and placing the earmuff's over them, slipping her hands into her gloves as she tops the rough railroad tie steps to the walkway. Her breath is sucked from her lungs by the wind rocketing across the the ice covered water hitting her full force, rocking her frame as it envelopes her.

Tears spring to her eye's and she is not exactly sure if they are here because of the freeze drying winds touch, or if it is the tears she knew where to close to the surface the past few day's. It didn't really matter to her which they were, she wiped them hurriedly on the back of her glove then leaned into the gale with stubborn determination.

Rounding the bend where the tree's provided a natural block to the wind's viciousness, she gratefully dropped onto the protected bench that someone was wise enough to place at this particular juncture.

Shutting off the Walkman, she leans her head against the severely scratched plexyglass wall's, where she lets her thoughts and her tears run as loose as the winds dancing across the ponds icy surface.

This felt like it was a safe place to do that.

'That's enough', she thought, swallowing a few big gulps of the icy air helped fill her head with a good amount of what she thought of as common sense.
"If you don't rein it in now, its gonna be harder to control than a runaway horse on an endless straight away!", she firmly said out loud to herself.

She knew the thoughts and concerns were to big for her to carry alone, but she didn't know what to do with them either!
She didn't want to give them to anyone else and add to their load...

Then a new thought slipped almost unnoticed into her ear, just as though someone had leaned near and whispered, 'Box them up and give them to me.'
"How?" She demanded aloud.
'Just look a the thought that is standing at the front of your mind, tapping its toe in agitated impatience as we speak. What sort of box would be able to contain that?'

She made a conscious effort to look at the haggard image of thought that was there.
She knew it well, it was one of her oldest accusing thoughts, ruthless in it's implicating attacks.

She was surprised that she could picture it in a form...

Surprised also at the calmness accompanying the viewing of it.

She stood, then quickly and quietly retraced her steps, the whole while looking at that thought image as though it were a rock she had picked up along the the early morning trek.

As she drove back home, she didn't notice the calmness that had enveloped her, nor did she notice that the other thoughts on that self deprecating loop had all stopped, and were now standing hushed, watching with their thought jaws gaping.

Home. She hurried to put her things away, making a hot cuppa, gathering pencils and paper, then sat at the sunlit table and began a process.

A process that she never knew before, but would become good friends with...


Inspired in part by Taming Your Gremlin