Two-thousand twelve

The longer I am silent the harder it is to begin writing again. Today I find myself reflective, one year out from the Joplin tornado, I've only written twice since then. I was not even in Joplin when the tornado ripped through, but left the day before and arrived back the day after. Still, even here in the Arizona desert, safe from twisters and their deadly damage, I still hear my heartbeat race during a dust storm, as the sky turns black and the wind picks up. I think of the phone call I received from my dearest friend, her tears as she panicked, not knowing where she was- all the street signs, houses and landmarks had been erased. This sends my thoughts through a deep whirlwind...

Here I am one year later and I feel so foreign from the girl who was leaving Missouri in her little red car with her new boyfriend, launching a new adventure in the wild west. I feel old, and a so... quiet. I have one thing that has kept my life stable and moving forward, one thing that has kept me glued to the me I want to be, one thing that gives me a feeling of freedom and passion: the love of my husband. This love that reminds me that we live for and belong to something bigger than ourselves. I read back over the blogs I've written, glance over the essays I researched, pass over the books I devoured, and I realize... I've lost something. I haven't written a song in a year, my piano has a layer of dust and cat paw prints I can't seem to sit on the bench and remove. I haven't written words driven straight from my heart to the paper in a year, only barely been able to scratch out monotonous school essays. Instead of charging into the thick of what I see and feel is unjust, I am unmoving, paralyzed. Where have I gone?

Seasons. I remember a conversation I had with my lovely friend Jordan about how seasons so quickly change, how a summer can so easily slip into a winter. Here as I move into a brutal June in the valley of the sun, I realize I am in a bone chilling January. The voices and spirits that brought words to my dreams, and form to my passionate ramblings are so very far away. I have this anchor of human stability that is Justin, reminding me what deep, unending love is, what life means at its heart. Yet, I am alone aside from him. I have taken a separate paths from those I once walked with, and can find none who compare to the vision they gave me. This desert has dried my unquenchable thirst for taking action, for being the voice of those who do not have one. I have lost my own. 

From down somewhere inside of me there is spark when I hear the stories from Syria or read articles of those haunted by the unforgiving death of those they love. But just as in my nightmares, as sleep paralysis leaves me helpless and desperate, I cannot move. It's not that I do not want to, I do, so urgently! But, instead a great sadness, an unnavigable fog descends and surrounds leaving me to search the endless, sandy desert only to find my expectation of seizing hope scorched. I feel as I did in Scotland, disabled from my fight with tonsillitis as I stumbled into strep throat, landing me crippled into scarlet fever, unable to leave my bed for weeks. And here I lay, waiting for the spring to thaw the ice that entraps my feet from fulfilling all of the longings that are just waiting to be embodied and carried out. I sometimes feel dizzy from days of having nothing to do and then Justin holds me steady and reminds me it can't be winter forever as he inspires me. 

Somewhere inside is the girl who is never quiet.