Days now, I've been sneaking away from Emergency Meetings and Policy Decision Sessions, creaking open a text editor and feeling that little grunt of energy pile up behind my elbows until the pressure is so heavy that everything spills along my forearm bones and through my vibrating fingertips as they strike pseudo-randomly at keys.
Days now I've been aching to tell you that I am beginning to come to terms with being a girl and even INITIATED a shoe shopping expedition yesterday evening (I need a pair of summer shoes for work, these boots are conspicuous).
It began with an exasperated outburst on Tuesday when I accepted an invitation from Clinique's makeup counter for a Free Makeup Training Session.
The outburst wasn't mine. It was Sylvie The Makeup Girl, when I started arguing with her Training Manual. When I started arguing why her method was wrong for the shape of my eyes, about the colours and looks I prefer.
I don't wear makeup for pleasure, on weekends, and live clean of the time, but I guess when I do make the effort I've started learning something about it.
Sylvie huffed and ejected me from her "artist"'s chair for being too advanced for beginner training.
I figure I can't keep up the "I'm not a girl, I can't make myself pretty" excuse anymore.
Especially since, with Dave's help, some days I'm learning to do pretty even without the toys and crutches and designer seams.
Like around the fire. Naked to the waist, moving just to feel.
Or more appropriately, learning to feel; to feel the way my eyes shine like so many of the peoples' who blot out the stars with their own.
Last week was my first four-day vacation. For all the planes and trains and leaping escapes of the past years, it was the first time I'd ever booked time off work to do so.
I walked into it terrified, insecure, nervous.
Wednesday night I broke down and cried the night away, and most of the other nights were just as sleepless.
Somewhere in those tears, though, some clot on my heart let go, some bite of fear and the gentle sting of slowly returning shyness of my childhood eased.
I returned to this city of cities with a new strength, carrying a piece of a secret meadow with me, and this week at work they've thrown a thousand emergencies at me (how many things can go WRONG in four days?!? I had TWO alternates, trained and everything!) and I'm still standing, and that quiet space inside me is still throbbing.
I learned a lot. I hurt a lot. I reminded myself of lessons that I had displaced to the back of my mind in the rush to learn to walk corporate.
I remembered, I grew, and this week I am superhuman again.
This week I am sore from yoga, this week I am touched by my boss' proclamation of love, this week I learned a new phrase in cantonese.
This week I am beautiful, this week I am slightly less inept at things that had always evoked fear-hatred in me.
This week I am alive, and in love, and ready to walk forward.
Last week I found catharsis. This week is a new road, and I am the fool with change heaped on my shoulders.