Where Change Meets the Past--and Sometimes Never Gets Up

"Tone it down."

As I sit to write in my journal, I hear this message in my head. It's a message from the past.

I don't know why it's chosen to present itself now.

I was often told as a child to settle down, be still, stop squirming, stop being so prissy. The way adults in my life saw it I was too big for my britches, I needed to watch my mouth, needed to be seen not heard.

I see why I still don't want to bring my full self to light even at fifty years of age.

At fifty, I hear echoes of the in-charge voices around me when I was five or six or seven or eight or ten and on.

When I hear those voices, I go into my children-obey-your-parents mode or my respect-your-elders behavior. If there wasn't room for fancy-pants, full-of-herself me as a kid, why would I believe people would suddenly request a truthful dose of who I am today?

So I hide and smother. I root myself as a couch potato and grow back into the same soft indention of the couch's nurturing place day after day. I sleep continuously as if sleeping will keep me from remembering what twenty-four hours fully realized might look like.

I make plans to change while I'm couch inclined. I make plans to read the books I've collected on rituals and then write an article on friendship and ritual and submit it to a magazine.

I'm going to peruse the books I have on folklore and personal narrative, on gypsy stories. I'm going to research labyrinths online and insert that information in the journal about my labyrinth walks.

I'm going to revise my novel, work on my new business of the week, grade an essay or two, and on and on the list goes of things I don't do, of things I only couch-think of doing.

I argue with myself--surely there's only so much sleep a person can need. Not me. I need that much and more. One more nap might reveal the Power Dream that answers all my questions, heals all my sassy-ass behaviors I acquired as a kid, the behaviors that prompted the tone-it-down commentary in the first place.

After the Power Dream, I might wait around for Power Dream II and Power Dream III before I take action. No need to get in a hurry.

It's pitiful. Dismal really. I don't know if I can blame it on this pattern of past voices twist-tied into my memory telling me to get over myself already and that I'm not the reason the sun rises every morning.

And in truth, I don't want to blame anyone as much as I want to rip my couch-potato-rooted self off her cushioned behind and send her on some real adventures--adventures that don't involve closed eyes and a wishful heart.

There must be a way to push through this malaise. Even as I try to type here, my eyelids flutter in an attempt to stay open, but prefer sleep.

Maybe answers come in time. Isn't fifty years enough time? How many years do I have and are the couch and sleep truly that appealing to me?

Right now they are.

The more I fight it, the more I curse it, the more I rebel against the heaviness of it, the more consuming it is.

I must believe that a pattern is the worst just before it clears. I must believe that even in my fatigue and ennui I am loved. I must believe that the way out is by loving myself fully for how I got in this space to begin with.

I must believe that when truth is offered as prayer, even when the words are formed from a self unsure and imperfect, not on her knees but on her couch, progress is somehow being made, patterns are somehow being broken.