'words in my head like misfits after midnight begging for a light....'

tonight, as i was leaving the loco hombre, where michael and i went to dinner, these individuals in a sedan drove by and squirted me all over my side with some wet substance (that turned out to be water, but i was horrified nevertheless). this happened after quite an unfavorable experience with an extremely inattentive waiter and an incompetent manager who acted as though the lacking service was somehow excusable because the waiter had been there awhile. whatever. bad service is bad service. that whole scene left me with an unsavory taste in my mouth, and then with the squirting incident, i was definitely rattled....

the one upshot of the evening was that i got to spend it with michael. after dinner, we came home and watched the second half of 'the other sister', which he had never seen. that movie is so sweet, so heart-warming, so endearing. there is one scene that gets to me every time, when the lead character (who is juliette lewis playing a mentally handicapped girl) gets extremely worked up over some people laughing at what she perceives to be her expense. she begins to scream at this whole crowd of people at her parents' country club - telling them over and over to stop mocking her. i loved the complete freedom that she had to let loose....to yell until her veins bulged in her head....to get as loud as she could in order to be heard. how many times in my life i have wanted to yell like that...so many, many times.....

the whole concept of vulnerability - that child-like vulnerability that she had - is one of the most admirable qualities a person can possess, and yet the people who seem to make themselves the most vulnerable are also often the ones of whom people freely take advantage. the trick is to ride the line between being vulnerable and being discerning about letting people in. it's hard to really love and let others love you if you're never willing to at least open the door to the room in which your heart resides.

and then there's that freedom - that beautiful, liberating, yet often unattainable thing that allows some people to say what they mean and not be concerned with what other people might think of them for having said it. i do NOT often have this freedom. i absolutely abhor drawing attention to myself unless it's a setting in which i feel completely comfortable doing so. i've been told by several friends that i can tell stories with the best of them, and yet unless i have some indication that people won't think i'm a fool, i won't really open my mouth that much. i'm definitely not one of those people (at least without the outright help of the Holy Spirit) who can just do and say whatever they feel in any given scenario.

anyway, during this one scene (along with several others), i always start weeping. it stirs me inside to see someone stating their needs so boldly....and here i sit, unable to call even one person when i'm sad to tell them that i need someone to reach out to me, to pray for me, to encourage me, to LOVE me. because the truth is that it opens the door of my heart a bit more than i'm comfortable having it opened. it gives another person the power to hurt me. to reject me. that strikes fear into me such that i cannot even begin to explain. i've been down that road too many times, and i'm scared as hell to go down it again.

so, in my self-sufficient ways, i hole up inside here.....tell people i'm 'fine'.....put on a smile. sign away my freedom to the prince of fear. and hope that, in His mercy, God will bust down my door and come in and hold my trembling self. or that someone will.

'words left unsaid. they may never see the light of day and that may be okay....'