As clouds rolled by like trees on a roadtrip, I wondered why things always seemed so much harder on the ground. What about being above it all made me feel so...above it all? And why did I always feel as if I was leaving something behind, be it an attitude, an item, a person?
I flew into my home state for my dad's wedding; it was beautiful actually. Maybe living in Texas has that effect where seeing green grass and trees excites a person, but the air felt truly clean down there; I found myself taking deep breaths and reveling in breezes more often than I do at home.
I felt more relaxed. Sure, it was a stressful time as I played bride assistant and cheerleader (for both bride and groom) and a new role of "big sis" (which is taking time to get used to), but at the same time I just felt...better. I wasn't tired, I wasn't anxious, I was just fine.
A small dinner party the day before the wedding introduced me to a plethora of new people, one of whom caught my attention in roughly 4 minutes. He's a lanky type of dude, taller than me by at least six inches. Very quiet nature about him, with squinty, wise brown eyes. Conversing led me to believe that he was older than he was, which made me feel like such a cougar for even vibing him like I was, but maybe it was my new attitude that made me just not give a damn.
The wedding came; it went as perfectly as weddings usually go. It was calla lily themed and classy. I wore a wine dress with matching shoes and a hair weave that nearly split my head open (nother post, nother time). The bride was beautiful and the groom composed and handsome (and I'm not just saying that because I'm related to them either, they're seriously super cute). My dress fit perfectly (the shoes were gorgeous, so of course they hurt) my natural hair (gelled within an inch of it's life) had held throughout the wedding and exorbitant amounts of dance tracks (although under my gelled "swoop" bang I held a tissue to stop the brown goo from weeping- so not sexy).
I had my first slow dance ever, albeit a little off beat, with the young heart throb who, at the end of the night, told me how good I looked (even though he later said I looked prettier with my hair the way I usually wear it which was a "yay" moment). My family of instigators literally ran with that, let me tell you, and started wanting to all of a sudden ask me how I was doing, if I was seeing someone, yada yada. What can you do?
What did I do? I rolled with it; usually I'd get all high strung about it but I realized that they've never seen me, not the real me anyway. They see the little girl in the big dresses and shiny Mary Janes. They see the awkward preteen with braces and really terrible acne. They've never seen the me that's real, the me under all that, and the young'n brought out the best of the real me; I heard 'em say I was
It was such a nice night. It was such a nice trip. And as soon as I landed back in Texas it all felt like a dream; I got tense and was thinking ahead a mile a minute. And then I looked in my phone and saw messages from the young'n, reached into my purse and felt the necklace that I wore to match the shoes, and remembered while inhaling the sweet smell of tree-grass-and-dirt that centered my anxious spirit.
I always leave things behind I suppose, but it's the things that I can take with me that make more difference.
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