Essay~No Pigmy Goats~AF~15

In high school and college, I didn’t really create my life plan like I should have. A lot of the girls in college felt like they should be married with 2.5 kids by age 25. I never felt like that, but I did feel like I would at least have a fabulous job that I loved, a cute little “tiny house” in the country to exist in for the single part of my life, and two pigmy goats to keep me company. Their names were going to be Snippers and Clippers, because their main purpose in my life would be to mow my grass for me. There I would live, in complete happiness until some gorgeous stranger came, knocked on my door, and asked for a glass of iced tea. (Why a gorgeous stranger would be in the middle of nowhere stopping at random houses for a glass of tea was not important.) We would sit my front porch looking at the gorgeous view, telling each other our life stories. Then we would fall in love and live happily ever after with Snippers and Clippers to look after until we decided to adopt children. Not your average ideal life, but I’m not your average person.

 That’s not what happened. I applied to like 30 jobs after college and the only place that would hire me was a call center in the middle of the hood. I was desperate, so I took the job. I am sorry to say that I still work there. I didn’t think I had any mental disorders before I started working there. Now I have many. I have had several anxiety attacks. I get weekly if not daily suicidal thoughts. I also now understand the mind of an arsonist. I have never wanted to burn a building to the ground before. Now I daydream about it, you know while I am sitting in the car a few minutes before work agonizing about going in. I knit at work. It is my own sad attempt to keep myself sane. People keep asking me to make stuff for them, but I never promise them anything because then I would feel obligated to get it to them in a timely manner. And that’s just too much pressure for me. I keep telling myself, I’ll be free of this place soon. When I get suicidal, I think about how great it will be to quit when I find another job. Because on quitting day, I plan to show up in a party hat, with balloons, my own going away cake, and knitted hats for everyone!

 I do not live in a tiny house nor do I own pigmy goats. I live in a one-bedroom apartment. There is nothing wrong with my apartment really. I’d rather my guests not have to go through my bedroom to get to the bathroom. I don’t really like all those parking spaces that I can’t park in because they are reserved for people who pay for them. And there’s just not much room for my pigmy goats to run and play. There’s not really a need for them either because there’s no grass for them to mow at an apartment. So, I don’t have pigmy goats. I’ll probably never have pigmy goats. But if I ever do, I have names picked out.

 You know what I do have that I didn’t expect that this age? A boyfriend. Not one of the ones you’ll probably get rid of soon either. He is one of those you want to marry and adopt children with one day. I know! Weird! He did kind of come out of nowhere, but he did not stop at my apartment and ask for a glass of iced tea. I’m pretty glad he didn’t. The more I think about that scenario, the more I think a grown man I don’t know knocking on my door for anything might be a bit creepy…. Notice I am not a romance writer.

 I guess what I’m trying to say is, life is not ideal for anyone. Not even the people who did accomplish the whole married with 2.5 kids by age 25. Because those people probably didn’t realize their spouse leaves his dirty socks in the floor and that babies don’t have snooze buttons. But it’s okay! You see you have a plan and God has a plan. Chances are they don’t match up. Chances are your plan wasn’t that great anyways. I love my life! Every area of it is going pretty darn good, except my job, but prayerfully I will be rid of that soon. I have a nice little apartment, a car with A.C. and everything, great friends, awesome mom, and a fabulous boyfriend! The ideal life looks different now. Now when I plan for the future there is a man in it! And no pigmy goats! Crazy right? It is ever changing. Don’t be afraid to change with it.

Also, if your job or anything else gives you suicidal thoughts.  See my poem Silencing Suicide https://somorahssanity.blogspot.com/2017/09/poemsilencing-suicideaf12.html for encouragement.  You got this!  Joy comes in the morning!

Letter~"A Response Letter to LadybytheSea"~AF

Dear Lady by the Sea,

You are a mess, you're crazy, and sometimes you just don't make sense, but I love you to death.  You have this big heart, this love for people, for art, music, and stories.  You see the whole world as if it were a book and we are all characters.  You see books as if they are the world and the characters are real.  Like I said, you're crazy, but there is a certain poetry in crazy.  If you were not crazy, we could never be friends because we couldn't go to concerts and shake our hair or laugh about at things like characters in shows who never get fired as much as they skip work.

You have this way of learning things.  You don't like to learn from other people, you like to teach yourself.  I wonder if you were born in the times of the great scientists like Einstein and those people who like to drop things and give it's fall a name, what kind of trouble you and them would have gotten into.  I wonder if you would have given gravity it's name first.  You would have probably thought harder about it's name.  It would have been symbolic in some way.  It would have had to mean something.

I see the beauty in your heart when I look at your paintings.  I can't explain it.  The best I can do is compare it to a group of two year old's playing with bubbles.  They are so wild and gorgeous.  They squeal and laugh.  They're so awestruck that it makes you awestruck.  Wild and gorgeous describes all of your art from poetry to paints.  If you could fill a canvas with laughter and squeals it would look like the painting hanging in my bedroom that you said you had so much fun with.

I know we challenge you.  I know I push you further than you want to go sometimes.  But I also know that you actually want to go further, you just won't admit it to yourself.  You, Lady sit by the Sea and you marvel at it because it's gorgeous, because God is the best artist.  You wonder as you sit there what it might feel like to go running into the ocean.  You wonder if it's cold or warm.  You think about the glorious things that might be beneath the surface, but you are held back by a terrible fear of sharks.

Lady, whenever you are tired of your spot in the hot sun, whenever you are ready for the refreshing ocean to ease the pain of your sunburn that you inevitably have from sitting in that spot by the Sea for years, you are going to go running into that ocean.  It's going to be a glorious sight.  By this, I mean you are going to take a big risk.  You will dive deep and you're going to grow a fin. By this, I mean you're going to do impossible things, not hard things.  Impossible things.  You may even see a shark, but you will face it with all of the boldness of Esther and command it with all of the authority of Christ.  By this, I mean you're going to do impossible, terrifying things with confidence.  Then, we will all call you by your new name.  Sirena Enla Mar.  I'm quite sure God gave it to me.  Translation, Mermaid in the Sea.  Because once you have discovered how powerful you are in the big gorgeous sea, this will be your favorite place and you won't believe you were ever scared of it.  

So as if I haven't challenged you enough, here's another one to help build the confidence that Sirena Enla Mar will need to do impossible and terrifying things.  Take your own challenge that you have so carefully avoided.  Sit down somewhere quiet and take a long hard look inside yourself.  Do not get up until you have found three things you are proud of about your personality.  If you'll listen hard enough, God himself just might tell you what he likes in you, what he placed in you.  

Love, 

Acacia Faye

   

Blog Post ~ "Before I learned to Hide" ~ AF ~ 9

I think childhood stories show more of a person than stories from adulthood.  As children, we didn't feel the need to get permission to be ourselves.  So today, I'm going to tell you three things about my personality by telling you stories from my childhood.  You will get to know Acacia, before she learned to hide parts of herself.

Goofy

When my younger sister and I were about seven and eight, we would spend a couple of weeks in the summer with dad.  Our step-mom would let us stay awake long enough for him to get home so that we could annoy him a little bit before bed.  When he finally did get home, he would be so tired that when he sat down to talk to us, he would go right to sleep and sleep talk to us.
One day we decided to paint his toenails while he was sleeping.  It was my sister's idea and it was brilliant!  Our step-mom was in on it, so if he wanted to spank us, he would have to take it up with her.
We waited until he got home, gave him a hug and talked to him until he fell asleep as was our normal routine.  Then we painted them piggies!  I don't remember what color, but knowing our girly selves, they probably had sparkles.

Dad told me later on that those painted piggies got him out of a fight the next day.  He was outside wearing sandals about to fight this man, probably for something stupid, then the guy looks at dad's feet and started laughing.  This makes dad angrier.  He says, "What are you laughing at?"  Then looks down and all he can say is, "Daughters man."  The guy understood.

Generosity

As told by Great Granny...
You know, when you were about five years old, we were in the grocery store and I was freezing cold.  You took your little sweater off and handed it to me.

Courage

As told by Mama...
Do you remember when you decided to get baptized?  You were scared to death of water.  You would never even get off the steps at the pool and you definitely wouldn't put your head under water, but you were determined to get baptized.  You and your cousins practiced in the pool in the backyard, going underwater.
When the time came you were ready.  We went out to the lake and when they went to dunk you, you panicked and kept your head above the water.  Everyone clapped and the preacher and the deacon thought they were done, but you said, "My head didn't go under."  You made them do it again.

By: Acacia Faye

Narrative ~ Popular Preppy Boat Shoes ~ LbtS ~ 3

Popular Preppy Boat Shoes 

By: Lady By The Sea

     I once bought a pair of preppy shoes. Preppy boat shoes that were the 'in' shoes of the time and, not only that, but they were the popular, preppy shoes of the year. These shoes were the right color, the right size, considered cute, and they were on the expensive side- even when they were on sale. But, I bought them because I thought I would try something new and treat myself. However, when I wore them - oh no- they hurt my feet! They weren't working for me. Nope. I felt uncomfortable. My feet felt out of place and nothing I did made these shoes work for me. I tried insoles, pads, wearing socks, not wearing socks, and getting the popular preppy boat shoe socks. Even duct tape didn't help.

     It was like having a pea under my mattress and no matter how I tried I couldn't ignore that pea in these popular, preppy boat shoes. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get comfortable or how I could slowly start to hate these expensive shoes that felt like walking on a rough road with a tiny wood-chip stuck in the inside sole. Oh, how my sole wanted it removed. So, I chunked them in the back of my closest and got my old pair of scuffed up Chucks with 'Jesus Loves You' written on the toes, and my feet felt at home again. There was no pea under this mattress. It was like I was walking on soft familiar carpet in my house for the first time in months. Oh, how my soles rejoiced in my old shoes. I accepted the fact that I'm not the popular, preppy boat shoes kinda person, I'm classic with a touch of unique.