Just breathe

Nothing like waking up with your head so stuffy that the act of breathing takes a sheer force of will to accomplish. I cannot imagine how people who suffer from breathing disorders manage to get any air at all on days like this.

Of course, this becomes a metaphor for whatever is going on personally. Sometimes, we hold our breath in anticipation of what might come up next. It isn't necessarily something bad, it's just the fear of the unknown, whatever that might be.

I had a strange dream last night that sort of upset my little apple cart. I dreamed I had a baby girl but for some reason, my brother in law and his wife had the little girl and wouldn't let me take her. They didn't even want me to see her yet I knew she belonged to me and with me.

Strange indeed.

But when I woke up and realized it was just a dream and not a reality, I must confess the first thing that ran through my mind was that at 45 years old, the idea of having an infant in the house presents some not so fun scenarios.

While I still have sleepless nights due to panic attacks and bouts of insomnia, they are infrequent. With an infant, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be sleepless nights for months on end while they adjust to life on the outside of the womb.

I'm not sure what all of this baby talk is really all about.

Guess that is why I'm writing about it to sort it all out.

In an total direction change, I read a comic strip this morning that really had me laughing. Normally a fan of comics anyway, this particular strip appealed to me because like the characters in it, I am not always on target in my aims and ambitions.

Pearls Before Swine is an irreverent look at the things in life that are supposed to be taboo but which are exploited by the characters as a vehicle for the authors' humor. I must confess that I totally enjoy the strip and the completely looney little world that it represents.

Like the "crockydiles", I find that I often want to be seen as more than I am in reality only to find the mask of circumstance is ripped away to reveal my true person in painful detail.

Because I am trying to learn another language (Spanish), I can totally sympathize with the efforts of the "crokydiles" to appear more sophisticated and learned than they really are. And that is why the comic is so funny. Inevitably, whenever I try to appear sophisticated or worldwise, I manage to come off a weak sister who is a day late and a dollar short.

It's like a scene from one of my favorite movies "Bells Are Ringing" featuring Judy Holliday. She shows up a the house of a famous producer when a party is going on. The guests are busy impressing themselves with the namedropping and schmaltzy behavior that marks them as society wanna be's.

When Judy's character tries to fit into the name game, she finds that her life simply doesn't measure up with the yardstick used by the glamorous guests and she runs from herself and her truth in a vain attempt to fit it.

Needless to say, like most of us in real life, she fails both miserably and publicly in her attempt to 'be one of them'.

Maybe that is what the journey is all about. Learning to just take a breath, be yourself and like who you see in the mirror everyday.