Do You Trust Your Brakes?

I was cleaning old text messages off of my phone this evening and I came to a thread between my sister and I when she was home from Korea in July.  I read through it before deleting it and was reminded of a silly scenario that we made into a metaphor one night when we popped into a friend's barn for an impromptu visit on the way to Weis market.  I almost forgot about it, accept she mentioned it in one of her last messages to me before she boarded her plane to return to Korea.  She asked me, "Do you trust your brakes?"

We were standing around bullshitting about this and that and then as the guys began to talk politics our right brain geared minds grew bored and started playing with thoughts and objects laying about. Luckily there were some matchbox cars sitting on something nearby.  My sister immediately started to drive them around and make noises.  It is this childlike side of her presence that I miss the most, the one that makes me laugh and jokes me out of sadness.  I miss that side of her that gets that side of me going until we are suddenly playing with matchbox cars like children while adults discuss the government around us.  Oblivious.  We've honed our skill well; my sister and I can block out the world with our childhood coping mechanisms anytime.  This isn't always the most polite of things to do and I am sure we can seem rude, but we sometimes have little control over where the moment takes us. 

This moment took us to high speeds in a pretend car, jumping over ramps and heading straight for a wall.  One of us did the fake squeaky brake noise as the car stopped suddenly.  I remember posing the question, "Yes, but do you trust your brakes?"  Heading at a wall at high speeds how can you be sure that your brakes are indeed going to work when the moment comes?  How do you know that they will stop you?  You need to have a certain amount of faith in your brakes, to trust them in a huge sense.  But should you have to trust them so much when so many variables are influenced by you?  Speed, for one, is always a factor and it can be controlled.

If you head straight into anything  balls to the wall, you risk coming to a sudden lethal stop if you don't control your speed or use your brakes.  Most of the time though, people take for granted that their brakes are there.  They take off out of the gate pedal to the floor, burnin' tire, hootin' and a hollerin', speeding into the world...and trust that this system will later be in place to stop them before they get into any danger.  On a dime, even.  This isn't always the case, though, is it?  Should we be so bold as to let the future of our lives up to a precaution we don't have COMPLETE control over? Some people underestimate their speed and forget that they are in control of the brakes.  They are essentially only a steering passenger, but their judgement is needed, they are still commanding the vehicle.  The timing is their decision...their choice.  Whenever and however your vehicle comes to a stop is [in most cases and figuratively] up to you.  You are the matchbox car.  You control the brakes. 

So, do you trust your brakes?  Do you trust that you will stop when the time comes, when it matters most?  When you want to?  When you need to?  Or will you hit that wall?  There's a chance that you could even survive hitting a wall, there's a smaller chance you could crash right on through it.  Your brakes may be immaculate and you may have steel strong willpower.  So then, if you trust your brakes, do you trust yourself to use them?  Now, that...is a metaphor.

If the Shirt Fits: Who is Missie Sue?

As is the norm for the daily and weekly monotonous grind of my life, it seems anymore, I am once again "dejunking".  What does that even mean?  There is too.much.stuff!!  The trouble is, my house really isn't sized for hoarding, and I haven't quite learned to let go yet.  Cut me some slack; I don't even have an attic or a basement!  (And it is far better that way...I think.  I still pine!)  But, I desperately want to simplify!  I'm practicing.  I have started to go into a brave "pitch it" phase that I very much want to take full advantage of in multiple areas of our home.  Lucky for me, my husband was relatively baggage free when we met, he had few physical possessions and not many noticeable issues.  "Score!  'Cause we're gonna need enough room for all of my shit!!"  (That's a metaphor!)  I have been carrying some of my baggage with me since before grade school!  It's pretty hard to part with something you have had that long, whether you use it daily or not.  We shared a space for nearing twenty years!  These things have surely absorbed my energies, and I have, I'm sure, sucked up some of their essences.  What defines you?  The stuff that touches you?  The things you keep?  The things you let go of?  If I cast off the things I used once to define myself, will I be any less myself?
 
I don't really believe we are defined by our possessions, I uphold, rather, the near opposite belief, I can be very anti physical reality at times. I am, as I say, obsessively nostalgic. Go figure!  I do think I compulsively hold on to certain items for a reason.  I also struggle daily with getting the junk out in some sort of a routine!  I have so far THIS TIME AROUND been able to go through the spices and some of the vitamins and medicines. I tossed a lot of expired and old things.  No matter how small the object, this act is terrifying and empowering.  I feel a tiny bit of control in the out of control nature of pitching and tossing.  I have a bag full at the door of clothes.  I have a bag I am currently filling up.  I tossed in some things I pulled out of the glove and winter hat stash.  I am going through sweaters and already have three that can definitely go.  I'm trying to see these things differently.  Perhaps...it will be easier to let go if they aren't so useful? (They aren't.)  If they aren't so comforting?  (They stress me out!)  If they no longer have a purpose and I realize how I don't really use them or need them anyway it will be easier to toss the shit out!  (Yes!)  If you don't love it, it isn't useful, and it doesn't save you time or make you money....hey hey hey...goodbye!!

My big red fuzzy bathrobe, for instance.  I got it from a friend, it's awesome and warm.  To me, it's a tastefully dyed Egyptian cotton.  In reality, it is bright red and 100% polyester.  It's a Secret Treasure.  It's an impostor; a used bathrobe.  It's not even my very own, knitted out of fetal goat hair gathered on the full moon and dyed with my own menstrual blood or anything.  What's the attachment?  I can't help but wonder why I have kept it for so long when it isn't a real part of my life and honestly, I don't even use a bathrobe...but I fancy that I might.  It is for this reason I have so many clothes, so many books, so many art supplies, so many containers, so many totes full of things, things I fancy as essential parts of my life.  Things that I fancy a use for someday.  Things that I fancy will fit me one day.  I fancy I might, when it suites my fancy.  Well, isn't that grand?  The grand clutter of Missie Sue.  Who is she, in all this mess?

I have this plaid, short sleeved, button down shirt.  I believe it was one I took from my father's closet in high school, when I was very into wearing my dad's old shirts from the 70's and 80's.  I was also into punk at the time, which seemed to be into name tags.  Silly ones, real ones, whatever, it was a style.  I wanted a name tag, but not a fake one.  I didn't want something made for someone else; I wanted something completely original, my own name.  It was at this time that I decided to combine my nickname and my middle name and make it greater than the sum of its parts.  I cut a small piece of an iron on patch and by my sloppy hand embroidered it with the name "Missie Sue" in yellow cross stitch thread.  Missie Sue became a character that represented my dominant side, the part of me that was desperately seeking an identity in high school.  That part inside that was going to express itself or die.  The same side that writes this blog, the same Missie Sue.  This shirt fits me like a glove.  It was my very first uniform, my first super hero cape.  My name tag.  I bravely named myself, creating my own brand in an attempt to avoid receiving a label.  Unfortunately, I still received plenty of those, but fortunately I  established a relationship with my "better" side, a relationship that continues today, the longest relationship I will ever be in.

So, do I really need a red bathrobe for comfort?   Would I miss it if it wasn't here to occasionally throw on for warmth?  Should a person struggling with depression really purposely make it a habit to wear a bathrobe MORE often?  Isn't that just insult to injury?  Should I toss the plaid shirt?  It would look good over a blue or brown tank top?  I could probably pull off plaid with a fedora?  I could rock it out for old time's sake.  Will I actually WEAR my old uniform ever again?  Is it REALLY a necessary part of my wardrobe or person, required to be who I am?  Probably not...but I fancy it is.

What's the attachment?

Me To You,
Missie Sue

Living the Questions; Dying for Answers

"Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now..."  - Rainer Maria Rilke

In a way I feel that all of the years of my past were spent asking, or rather - living the questions.  Wouldn't you think I could have the perfect questions figured out after all of the practice I have had?  Nooooo.  I just can't seem to word my questions right.  Maybe, just maybe - I don't even know what I am asking.  I mean, vague running mind language aside, it is possible. 

Could it be possible that I won't fully understand my questions or even that I have been asking them until I receive answers to go along with said questions?  Hopefully this year I can put two and two together and I can figure out what question I have been living in and consumed with. I need to understand what has been plaguing me as the unanswered question of my life.

It's not that I naively think that 2012 will be amazing and I will suddenly and magically get all of the things figured out with myself that I have wanted to for years, accomplish all of my goals and tie up all of my loose ends with a cherry on top; the New Year simply brings a sort of hope about it, albeit a misguided, unknowing fool of hope that helps you plan the year ahead like you were ordering desires from the Sears catalog.  We simply need to place our order! Really?

My point is (actually, at this point I am not sure that I have a true point) that maybe all of these things could happen as suddenly as we desire them to...but - all in due time.  Maybe Rilke is right and if we are forcing something to work that it isn't the appropriate time for, we will surely fail, because we wouldn't be able to fully appreciate it at that time.  

I don't even know if that makes any sense.  It's late and I am tired.  I don't think I'm being the answers right now.  I'm most certainly still living the questions.   Maybe that is what I was musing on...the fact that it is okay if I haven't accomplished these goals in the past.  I shouldn't be so hard on myself, because Rilke tells us that we would not be able to live them anyway.  And if the point is to live everything, to experience everything, then we will have to believe that goals will be accomplished at the appropriate time.

What will it be time for this year?  Will any answers reveal themselves and shed some light on my path?  Will I advance on my journey?  I reckon we don't quite know yet, but the fun is in living it, even if it is still a question. 

Me to You,
Missie Sue