Ask Me Again

Ask me again.

Because I walk through this life with eyes wide open and I feel like I see so many things and so many people and so many events and they all set me running towards understanding but sometimes that understanding is hard to come by and so I just don't know how to answer. But

ask me again.

Over the course of a week in my life, a friend had a baby and my brother got engaged and another friend got married and a different friend lost her grandfather and I want to speak about the beauty of life, how it allows us to see beginnings and endings in the span of a few days, how it doesn't slow down, even when you feel like it should, how it pulls together the disparate parts of your being as it throws you into new communities and reminds you where you came from and where you're loved. But I don't know how to say all those words exactly, to tell the stories of the leaves that only have the potential to change, clinging to summer green when the world around them aches for autumn, to talk you through involuntary smiles and sing-alongs, to teach you how to drink deeply from the wine of good conversation or let kindness flow from the store of goodness recently renewed in your soul. I'm still trying to give shape to these thoughts and so what I need you to do is to

ask me again.

I'm here, I promise. I'm focused and I'm engaged and I want to let this experience form me, make me into the person I know I've been aching to be. I'm excited for all the information that's coming my way but it's a lot to work through, you know? It's a lot to handle. We're reactivating circuits in my brain and forcing them into perpetual use and we're asking that from my brain after it's been disoriented by life and location. And then, on top of that, life kept on happening. I can't be disassociated from everything that's come before. So we're rattling the foundation I've just finished rebuilding while I'm finding my place again and wondering how it is that I've never asked these questions before or had these questions answered and where I can take these thoughts now that I've developed the muscle of chasing them down. I'm doing my best to be present but sometimes it's hard to hear over the mental gears ticking so it would help me out if you could

ask me again.

Because there's a lot going on and I don't know what my answer should be.

Because I'm good at protecting myself, but I know that I do that to my own detriment and I'm not sure how to fix it.

Because I do want this. I just express that poorly.

So ask me again.