Dress Sizes

There are a great many posts of late by women saying they have the blues and are feeling like their own skin is a size too small.  There is something in the air women are saying, maybe a funk has settled in, worse than the cold, harsher than the flu, debilitating like pneumonia, and that nothing is moving forward.  We’re taking steps forward, but the wind is pushing-pushing, pushing us around and damn-it, it’s taking our spirit too.  Those damn Karma fairies are holding back on the good news, a winning lottery ticket, come-hither stares from a lanky stranger, they’re holding back on all those little intangible perks in life we inhale greedily and take for granted when we’re not under that grey cloud of the blues.

I’ve felt it too.  It is the sort of feeling that seeps in through the cracks in the window where the putty is worn, or picked up when you’re standing in aisle ten at Target.  You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know the moment it settles over you because your shoulders sag, your back rounds at the curve of your spine, and in my case, my head tilts a little too far forward.  Yep, it’s the woozy feeling of the blues.  Don’t you hate it?  When I was living in London under all that oppressive grey, I learned about SAD syndrome, I suspect the current global funk shares symptoms with SAD.

We watch our leaders and wait and wait and wait.  We say to ourselves, our sisters, our Gods, what is going on with this world, why is it taking so long to kick start it, to shift the perspective, bring back the groove, why is my heart oft heavy with despair.  Of course, each of has our own version of this internal dialogue. Until now, I hadn’t articulated mine, and I’ve been feeling less like myself, walking at an angle, singing the blues, closing my eyes at night only to fall asleep on the damp pillow case from the tears that fall without cause.  I tell myself, let it go woman, you’ve been through worse and that this heavy feeling you are lugging around isn’t a life sentence, it’s …

The million dollar question, for me anyway, is why am I singing those damn blues tonight, and why is this global funk hampering our spirit?  I could write a vignette on my own issues, but I’d get to the end only to be right back at the beginning.  It comes in cycles, these feelings.  I remind myself that there have been darker times in our global history, and when I do I can’t help but wonder if there was a woman like me back then writing, not on a blog, but in her diary, asking the same questions I am, (we  all are) and praying to her Gods to send down a ray of sunshine, for a magical intervention.   It goes in cycles.

My dad, Bronco Bill, use to say to me
music he said is the soul’s companion, in life the sun wasn’t
always bright, the wind often cruel, the nights so lonely the
wolves would find other doors, and that the heart might cease
tapping in tune, and when it did that I’d look up at the stars and
question all that I knew, and surrender under the weight of it all.

<there was stuff in between, but he’d finish with>

music is the companion to seek when the wind and the wolves
come a-howling, when the lover you adore is in the arms
of another, when reasons are no longer clear, remember
the notes and the tune, and you will be sure

I get lost sometimes too, and there are times when there isn’t a damn thing I can do about the situation I am in but ride it out, and hold on tight until I am upright with my shoulders back.  I am worried about our country, our troops, my job, my body that has too much real estate, and my sometimes lonely heart, but then I get to thinking about Bronco’s words about music and how it heals, and how it has always been my refuge.  I found my favorite playlist today, tuned in and turned it up loud, and in all those lyrics and glorious music, I found my center, yet again.

This may not cure what ails you today, but it might serve as a reminder to stay true to yourself, and hold on to all you got.

http://video.aol.ca/video-detail/all-my-girlz/2841205545