I really need to know...

"I'm stretching again, but my resilience is long gone and I can't bounce back. It's tiresome dragging around the excess, yet I'm unsure whether it's safe to cut it off. What if it houses my essence, or the directional portion of my id?"

They say every 7 years you're a completely new person. They say that every year - every day for that matter - you are physically different from the time before. That makes sense considering my hair has been falling out in handfuls and silent waves that lay across my carpet like shadowy ghosts upon the shore. (Scary.)

I'm shedding. But it's not just my hair. I shower, of course, and when there are witnesses near when I'm through (which is rare), they'll comment on the red lines reaching across my arms and back and chest. "You're scratched!" they'll proclaim as if they discovered some forbidden treasure to my personal life; but they're wrong. It's just the marks I receive from delicately pealing back my old skin. I know the image seems more tragic than my words admit, but I'm pretty sure I bathe and lather and rinse like most others. I have a loofa and I sud it with Oil of Olay moisturizing body wash, yet all I have to do is attend to an itch with the passing of my finger and a trail of skin comes pealing away, resting in the pit of my nail. By the time my shower is over I look like a shiney victim of sado-masachism and there's a body caught in my drain. And every day it's the same. Goodbye Old Meredith, hello New.

It's growing hard to keep up with my development. I've realized for quite some time that my head forges through reality at a rate just beyond what my body will allow - that's why I walk like a ram surging forward, brow heavy, eye on some invisible target. As I drive and press onward, omniously knowing, the rest of me tails behind a little lackluster. The resilience to maintain my form fades out like watercolor, yet holds heavy in the past like a cautioning anchor unwilling to let freedom fly.

At this moment I'm really not sure what I am. Transitioning from old to new seems more strenuous than ever before, even though they say it's a revolving and reoccuring cycle of life and death.

I would like a cut off point.

I would like to know that who I was 3 years ago was a different me, a stupider me, a me that would of course make those silly mistakes. And I would like to know that here, in this era, I am wise and able and if nothing else, deserving of the things hard working adults are owed. Have I not trudged around with an excess long enough? Am I not West enough? Am I not brave enough? When can I say "I am new. I am now exactly here in this fresh moment without a shadow for bagage."?

Well, if the skin in the drain or the hair on my carpet house the directional portion of my id, so be it, let it sit, let it stay. I feel ready to break out into my new self even if it means wanderlust and overwhelmed engagement of the present. I'm eager to face a new reality. I'm excited to see what things await me, and I'm quite keen on having my body in line with my head. It's time to pause the pressing foward, and simply relish in the now with a sparkling new wide-eyed wonderment.

I'd like to know that it's safe for me to stand here, bare, without my anchor... but I do know that it's time for a new adventure. So here I am.

Perplexed and Puzzled

Sitting on the slope of Alamo Square facing a row of painted ladies, I am stricken by how perfectly the pieces fit together. The roofs fade into another, the complementing colors of each door and shutter cast along the San Francisco street like a very befitting rainbow. Is it one house or many?

He grabbed my hand, if nothing but to compare the length of my thumb to his, but once our fingers touched they locked like two puzzle pieces that belonged to no other. Are we designed to be this way or is it forced or by mistake, like all the other tries before this?

In my apartment, 2000 tiny cardboard cut outs with jagged, squiggley edges decorate my kitchen table. 2000 specs of a Starry Night, scattered and confused but in my touch. I bought the puzzle as a means to get away from the norm of my computer and my cellar-room walls, and to remind me of the virtue, patience. It is a worthy pursuit, especially considering the like colors, repetitive edges, and limited space. I'm still wishing upon stars to find the matter an accomplishment. And this, too, is befitting.

The question pokes at me: What fits?

My life was picked up and put back down on the edge of the world, in a pointed corner on a hill dubbed Frisco. The houses and skyline and trees all certainly fit together with a balanced equilibrium that on a regular basis brings happy tears to my eyes; yet me within this puzzle, I doubt my place.

In my home, or space presumed a home, I'm next to another piece that looks like it should match. It's the same color and shape and age... and for over a year I've tried to connect my ends to its. For over a year now I've felt that even though I should fit here with her, and even though we're close with very little space between us to suggest it's wrong, some pieces simply do not go together. The looks deceived me. My personal puzzle will never be complete with this mismatch jammed inside me.

So I seek outside my self for matching neighbors and connection. I seek solidarity from friends and dates and fingers intertwined in mine. What troubles me is that it's still so hard to tell if these ties are true, and correct, and meant to be as if it were written in the starry night... or is everything in this city forced for me?

I can't find the last edge piece of my puzzle. I'd feel a lot better if I knew it even existed and could contain all the other loose ends. But at a certain point, you have to work on the tiny aspects in the core, and get to the external surrounding in its own time. I don't know if the whole thing will work out. I don't know if all the houses at Alamo Square are connected - I don't know if that hand in mine is meant to BE mine - I don't know if my apartment will ever be my home - I don't know if San Francisco is the place I fit in general.

I do know that I can only take it one step and one piece at a time. It's a practice in patience, after all. I vow to my self and to the knowing thing within me that even when the pieces get mismatched, I will fix them, and some sweet day, I'll have the big picture in place.