Awareness, With a Crispy, Crunchy, Existential Coating

Lately I have been making a (less than stellar) effort to be more accepting of my own feelings, rather than trying to fight them or change them or making myself feel bad because maybe they're not the "right" feelings for the situations. (Shouldn't I feel this way and not that way?) So lately, when all of those feelings get all gnarled up like rubbernecking rush-hour traffic, I have been conscientiously stopping and acknowledging each individual feeling and letting it just happen and pass through me. I mean, really, if I can act and allow all kinds of feelings that are in ways mine and in ways not mine flow in and out of me and be real, why can't I give my own, every-day feelings the same common courtesy? It shouldn't be some kind of luxury, it should be more like...air.

Yesterday, I was heading home in the fog and started thinking about all of these things that I'm dealing with and all of these things that are happening, and I started to get that feeling of all of those other feelings piling up again and then becoming a big knot. And then I suddenly became aware that I was alone. Not alone forever, but right then, right there I was very much alone. So I just stopped and let myself feel that. It hurt, but it came and it went, just like that. So then I just kept walking and paid attention to everything. I breathed in the dense air that smelled like damp towels and left beads of moisture on my face. I remembered seeing him the other day, the awkward distance, how he felt like a stranger all of a sudden and a the same time just as familiar as if nothing happened and the distance between three feet was unbearable and awkward and sad. And that, too, came and went. Then I breathed in the damp towel air again and looked at the skyline draped in blankets of eerie white haze and admired how beautiful the lights looked struggling to blink through it. Now I smelled damp air and...fried chicken. Fried chicken and rolls and maybe greens? And car exhaust, then damp air again. I felt my stomach growl and rumble for the first time in weeks. I moved through the damp air and thought of the good things coming and the things I have to appreciate and off in the distance I heard jazz at some event. And then I let my mind wander. It's not *really* jazz, it's really some amalgamation of jazz and funk that we slap the label "jazz" on because we don't know any better any more, even though we live in the "birthplace of jazz". All we seem to remember is that it has horns and bass and it's here and it sounds good, so it must be "jazz", right?

I felt my feet hitting the pavement, the crunching of wet gravel under my flat dress shoes. Wet and crunchy, like the breading on fried chicken... Ohmygod fried chicken.The air still smelled like chicken. My stomach rumbled again and I immediately thought, "I'm going to the place closer to my house on the way home, and I'm going to get fried chicken. And a biscuit. And fries. No- red beans. And a large Barq's. My stomach rumbled again and I realized this is the first time in a long time that I have actually felt genuinely hungry and really wanted food. I was so busy not feeling anything that I didn't even feel hungry for a while.

That's when I realized that it's time to turn over a new leaf, time to stop fighting what I know I can't change, time to stop trying to change myself but more importantly change how I choose to react to myself and how I choose to react to situations. I decided that I wasn't angry at myself or anyone else any more, and for the first time in a long time, I was comfortable in my own skin.

Except for being very hungry. Honestly, by the time I got home and ate, I swear that was the best fried chicken I've ever had in my life.