unwinding.

Good morning.


What is it with me?

I claim to need days and days of sleep after a long night of sleepovering on Wednesday, but here I am, less than days and days afterward, pushing the clock into the early hours again.

I'm time-processing.
Let me a'splain.

Recently, I am finding myself often left at the end of a day feeling as though I still have much unwinding to do before I am ready to relinquish the day from my hands. It's like I have a measure of time inside of me, a certain amount of it, given at the beginnings of all of my days, and meant to be spent exactly down to the drop. So, on days where I should be sleeping, but find myself ranting in semi-coherent blogs instead, I can feel the pouring out of the time inside of me, tumbling toward a pressing desire for sleep.

In other words,
I'm not done yet.
There are still too many words in my head to put them to sleep.

Much of the time, this processing happens on days where Sam comes over to the house and leaves late. All of the thinking, the laughing, the talking, the whatever-we-did-that-day is still presiding over my heart-space, needing to be given time before it will let me sleep. I think, possibly, this is because the concept of having someone over and then letting them go at eleven fifteen instead of keeping them for a sleepover is a new concept for me. Basically,
having a boyfriend is a new concept for me.

So, I watch two episodes of Lost.
I stay up until 1:06AM, writing blogs.
I listen to the acoustic guitar music on Sam's myspace over and over because he has good taste.
I unwind.

And you get to be here, or at least, I'm capturing it for you.
As if it were truly a momentous concept.
Oh well.
It's what's in my head.


Also in my head, a thought.

Thought: What are the movie moments of my life?

You know, the moments that should be on a screen somewhere, but instead are actually taking place inside of your humble existence. I wonder if I notice them. I wonder if anyone does. It's like this,

if someone else tells you to sit down and watch,
to pay close attention,
to someone else's story, and you do,
then you see all the beautiful moments, all the things that make you sigh, or cry, or leave you breathless, and you admire them.

But in your own life, when is there time to just stop and look at how beautiful everything around you is becoming? I mean, not literally. You can usually find a moment to see, if not smell, the roses. But, to really stop time inside of the most wonderful of wonderfuls, and to admire the sweetness of it all...maybe it's almost a skill.

So, in order to help you in your impending quest to stop time, here is a list of some of the more movie-like moments in my life, categorized for index and amusement purposes:

1. The We Are Best Friends Moment.
"I won't drop you!" I promised, with far more certainty than I felt. I shuffled around in anticipation of Julisa's weight on my shoulders as she considered the consequences of lowering herself downward from the branch on which she was stranded. I had helped her up into the tree and tried failingly to climb up after her. Now, as she was dangling, slightly traumatized, from the branch above me, we both knew there was only one way down. Somehow, she made it onto my shoulders and I staggered around without breaking both of our necks. This, I felt, was the simplest form of trust: I'm falling on purpose because you will catch me.

2. The Where's The Camera? Moment.
(I have more of these than anything else. Don't be jealous. Not everyone can fall on their face all the time.)

Sixth grade. Everything matters in sixth grade. Especially at the beach, especially with all your friends and all the college aged interns, and especially when you're home-schooled. Due to all of these things, the leaders of the youth group with which I was traveling saw fit for us scrawny little middle schoolians to play some terrible, awful game involving a lot of teamwork, some paper plates, and a basketball court approximately the temperature of the sun's core. So, we're playing this terrible, awful game of death, and I am bordering on a heat stroke from dehydration, so I decide to jog in the chillest, most attractively cool way possible across the adjacent court to get some water. Unfortunately, the adjacent court is, in fact, a volleyball court, complete with its very own incredibly resilient volleyball net. My unbelievably cool jog turned into an unbelievably horizontal bodyslam onto the sand. Interns and oh-so-cool eighth graders looked on in the briefest display of pity I've ever experienced. It took negative amounts of seconds for the "are you okay?" response to give way to peals of unsympathetic laughter. Somehow, there was not a camera around. This, I believe, is actually kind of tragic.

3. The How Do I Make This Last Longer? Moment.

I've been sitting here for minutes and minutes trying to choose one moment to describe for this category. I'll think of one and then wonder about how to describe it in words for a couple of moments, and then think of another, another, another. In the end, I am finding myself with a panoply of little moments all stacked up together in this category, each one so small and sweet that it seems like describing them all would be like describing each color of the sunset individually. You want to, you probably could, but should you try? Maybe.

Examples of this kind of moment are
- the first time Sam and I held hands.
- riding in the car with Katie in the spring with the windows down and the music up.
- all of the moments where I feel that sweet silence that does not need words, but does allow for them. You can speak whatever is on your mind, or you can just be silent with whomever you are being silent with, knowing that you both want to be exactly where you are.
- and, seeing my family all laughing together at once, entirely enjoying one another's company, and being exactly who we are.


Well, this is a lot to have written so early in the morning,
and perhaps I should go to bed before I put you to sleep with my wanderings.

Thank you to all who commented.
And to all the noble readers.
You are much appreciated.


Don't forget: Anyone can comment. Go for it. Let me know you're living.



PS. It says that I am posting this at 12:56AM. In actuality, it is 2:05AM. Hopefully, this gives you a more complete scope of my unwinding process. Thank you.

:)