(I decided on my song hours ago, and no, it has nothing to do with the political bombshell from this afternoon.)
My year of growth and facing my fears continues. I've had to deal with hardships and adult challenges over and over during this phase of my life, and I don't have the luxury of letting other people cushion me from being a grownup. Many of these hurdles are just minor obstacles that I cleared fairly easily. A few were long-standing emotional blocks that took a little more work to face, like the one I mentioned yesterday about learning to accept my appearance and decide that I am worth appearing in photographs. And obviously some were major, life-altering diagnoses that explained much of my history while simultaneously taking the wind out of my sails for the future.
This evening, the growth experience I faced was the stuff of nightmares. No, seriously, I literally walked straight up to a real life scene pulled directly from a recurring nightmare I have had scores of times over the last five or ten years. Without getting too deep into dream interpretation theories, I frequently have a nightmare about driving a car on a road that gets closer and closer to water, eventually becomes a low water bridge, or just narrows to the point that the wheels of the car are about to slip off into a knee-deep lake or stream. I don't know how the dream ends most of the time. That's the point that I usually pull myself out of it, right as the car starts to get wet. Tonight, we went back to the same park where I was yesterday for the photo shoot. We walked deeper into it than I did before, winding down beautiful paths as the sun set and darkness fell across the park. Most of the paths were paved, but at one point we looped around and went down a gravel path toward a stand of cattails. Suddenly, we faced a series of giant stepping stones that formed a path across a shallow pond. I stood at the edge of the water, on the second or third stone, and breathed deeply while I fanned my face and kept forcing my eyes to re-open when I clenched them closed. The water wasn't deep, probably not even up to my knees. But this view was my nightmare view, absolutely recognizable from those moments of fear. I had to remind myself that I was awake, that I wasn't in a car, and I had no reason to be stressed out. I had to convince my roommate not to stop halfway across, so that I could just traverse without hesitation. I didn't want a hand, I didn't need a flashlight. I just had to cross. It was so weird, finding my nightmare come to life, and getting all the way through it without having to wake up to survive it.
I got a lot of lovely photo opportunities this morning, although I didn't take advantage of all of the ones I saw. It was misty when I left to pick up my daughter in Boulder, and I stopped a few times as I drove the back roads across the county to reach her. By the time I made it to her house, the fog had completely cleared, although there was still frost on the grass and the cars parked on the street. I picked her up and we drove east toward the airport, and it wasn't until we paused to buy gas that we faced west enough to realize that the mountains behind the first ridge were entirely enrobed in snow. I tried getting photos from a distance, but most of the pictures were blurry or obstructed. I think my plan for tomorrow will be to get up early and see how many of the places I drove past this morning have beautiful light for new pictures. I will set an alarm and see what happens.
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