a letter to my missing chutzpah.

October 26, 2011

Hey!

That’s right, HEY! I’m talking to you, moxie. Chutzpah. Balls. Fire. Spark. Whatever you’re going by these days.

Where did you go?

I haven’t heard from you in awhile. I know I’ve been working and all, spending all day sitting at a desk in the corner, battling two computer screens, ten to-do-lists and about ten million expectations of myself, but I would have loved a text message, at least.

I know it’s been hard. I know you’ve been lonely up here. You’ve always been a bit of a lone wolf. A reader. An imaginer. A let’s-watch-8-seasons-and-then-some kind of gal.

But this time is different. You’re more…tired. Your belly is soft. You dizzy too easily. You haven’t counted strictly from one to eight in awhile. And giggles have been reduced to a minimum.

Imagine! You, without giggling. Without that unmistakable guffaw that used to define you from slides till senior prom? Now that’s something your 10-year-old self would have an issue with.

I know you didn’t mean to end up here. I know you had imagined going away to be a bit more direct. You’d do this. And that. And things would be in straight lines and drawers, put away. There would be clear steps and the gentle, slightly robotic voice of some soothing woman telling you where to go and when.

But there’s no such thing as GPS of the heart.

And those who used to hold your hand before can’t do it anymore. Or at least, they can during only certain windows of the day, maybe once or twice a week, schedule permitting.

I know it’s been hard. I know it’s a small thing, but when you found your tin Dodgers lunchbox in the recycling bin at work, you got sad not because someone put it there but because someone would think that it’s disposable or something and didn’t even bother to send out a cursory email or even treat it with the same kind of apathy they would a signup sheet for a volunteer opportunity, or to buy some coworker’s kid’s candy bars, or something. That box is a token of younger days. Of homework, and talking on the phone with your best friend for hours. Of a quiet kind of freedom.

It just seems like every little thing is out to get you, Fire. You see faces come and go where you work. You endure the dry cleaning lady next door to work name names and then correct herself as she remembers they have taken their laundry and laptops to other pastures, and she shakes her head in disapproval because her daughter had been snubbed and those who fled have done so out of cowardice and disrespect, because her baby would have fought tooth and nail and needle and thread to get and keep that job in PR, gosh darn it.

And I know you thought you would have too, Spark. I’ve seen you finger that business card of yours as it lays (lies? Is that proper AP style? I’ve no idea anymore) at the bottom of your purse, getting specks of rubber on it from sticks of gum that have managed to wiggle out of their wrapping, coaxed out of there with the help of the shrapnel of coins and other trinkets you insist on bringing with you.

I know, Moxie, you’re dreading to express that you don’t like what you’re in right now. You’re hunching, which isn’t like yourself. You’ve shriveled into an entry-level shadow. And this is no way to be.

You’ve seen the dark side. The ugly truth of idleness. The vapidness of those who have chosen Maury and mediocrity. Of dead-end jobs and hands that stink of someone else’s butter and grease, not by necessity but by their own lack of action.

Is that what you want? Some cul-de-sac of conscience? A never-ending loop of getting by and living through Facebook and running from the convenience store to the club and back? That is an uncertain and minimum wage kind of hell, Self. You were not meant to be on this earth to do that.

I know it’s not. I know you know in your heart you are destined for the sky. I know you will come back, Ambition. I know you will return.

Until then, I’ll use whatever map I can find to get you, Heart. I’ll be right here when you return, just like I was when you left.

9:58pm | URL: https://tmblr.co/Z4n0KyBA9k2e
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(Notes: 17)