Words

I've been having a tough go of things lately. Some pieces of my life have not been fitting

quite right - if that makes sense. I have been holding on to some bitterness and letting some pretty silly things weigh me down. I have felt really alone lately and feeling what I can only describe as a "disconnect" with some people that I really love. I need to bridge that gap somehow, but I haven't been able to figure out how that would happen.

I've been carrying a lot of things with me that I should simply set down gently for my own heart's sake. And be honest with people I love and with myself.

My relationship with my family has been so strained lately. I want more than anything for my parents to see who I am, to get to know me as something more than the child they knew. Months and days and years that they do not see when they see me.

The child they see who needs to look both ways when she crosses the street, buckle up in the car, go to the dentist and carry cash just in case.

The woman who runs a business, owns a house, and hasn't carried cash for years.

And has survived anyway.

And I wish I knew them - and I mean really knew them. I want to ask my mom what her dreams are - for herself - now. Because her life (as all of our lifes are) is still a work in progress. And she is so much more than just my brother, my sister, my dad, and I. I want to know what, if anything, of herself that she sees in me. Her loves and losses - probably so many similar to my own - and yet she seems to never understand the ways that love has made me make stupid choices. Stupid choices that she too made once upon a time. That no one, no amount of caution or parental advice can save someone from making. The choices that make a life. That make a person. That defined my character and made me stronger and wiser. And how it hurts when she seems ashamed of my mistakes because I am not.

And to tell her how much our summer nights together meant growing up, when we talked and laughed and were friends. Wrapped up in a blanket, sitting on the balcony together, just the two of us. Playing cards every night in the big room until I finally won on my own.

And that if I could, I would go back in time, and be there, even if it was just for a night.

And how impossible that seems.

And how sad that makes me.

And how anytime I do, well, just about anything - I over do! Because she always did. Bigger and better than everyone else - even if it means more time, more energy, more whatever. The daughter of an over-achiever, perfectionist - I see my mother when I take on too much, try too hard, give more than I have to give just because it is worth it to be the best sometimes.

I want to ask my dad what it was like to step off of an airplane and begin a life in a place he had never been. Alone. And to tell him that I am proud of the life he made for us - from so little. When I tell people how my dad came to the US and about the life he built, they are always amazed. He lived the American dream. And yet, when I tell the story, it is filled with so many gaps of things that I do not know, that he has never talked about.

Maybe he doesn't realize I would even want to know.

And how when I work hard (and I mean really hard) I look back and remember him going to work and never complaining about how long his days were. And how even though I wish he had been home more, I am so greatful to have had a dad who showed me that nothing really takes the place of working hard for things.

And yet I let hours and days and months and years go by.

And never say the words.

Why is it so hard to say those words, words that need to be said

but somehow cannot ever be properly said. And how when we talk,

we don't really say anything worth saying.

And all of these layers of words lay beneath and we somehow leave them there every time.

I'd rather say too much than say too little and wish I had somehow said it all.