Just Write {161}

November 11, 2014

This was the kind of snow that sticks to your shovel and your boots and all around the bottom of your jeans. And you can stomp stomp stomp but it’s not going anywhere. It’s just packing itself on thicker.

I would slide the shovel, scrape and scoop and then lift, my arms hurting. And then I’d try to throw the snow. Most of it stayed on the shovel, so stuck.

Yeah, yeah, this was a metaphor to me, but what isn’t, really?

Metaphor: The Over-Thinky Person’s Crutch.

I can’t help it, the heaviness of the snow is just too easy of a metaphor target, so there I was, letting it hit me like a good metaphor should.

I got mad at it, you know? Like most people do, at snow and wind combined. The way they refuse to stop blowing into the very place you’ve just cleaned. And getting mad and shoveling harder and faster doesn’t even really do anything about the blowing-back other than making me more tired. But I tried that anyway.

Today I feel like I ran for a really long time and then swam for a really long time and it feels awful and so good all at once. Because even if it was painfully slow and sometimes totally defeating, I got it done. It was like piles and piles of reams of paper that had gotten soaked by rain and then frozen. It was thick and hard and heavy. And sometimes I just stopped and stood and it’s possible that I cried and cried. I cried at the pain of so much more than my back and shoulders. I cried at fear and regret and confusion and exhaustion from working a lot and still feeling behind. I cried because it feels like all the hard things will never be over and it feels like so much of it is because of me. It’s both the snow and the wind, at fault, but I’ll take all the blame. I can see it. I can see the parts that are mine.

I cried because you can’t get out unless you face it and work.

A man walked up behind me with the newspaper early this morning and I jumped, OH HI! You scared me!  He laughed and then he said, This stuff really does make for some good work, huh? 

Yes, it does.

Supposed to be this way all winter. 

Yes, it is.

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This is the 161st installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {New here? Please see the details.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. (Then link back to this post in your Just Write post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

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{ 1 comment }

Kim November 11, 2014 at 12:08 pm

It’s good and hard and awful and healing and purging and sucky and perfect, right? Too bad we left our snow blower in Utah. I would have put it on the moving truck with you. xo
Kim recently posted..I will be a better friend

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