Train bells are a lonely sound, but a familiar one. My whole life I have lived close enough to the tracks to hear the horn, the low rumbles, the soft clinking that carries so well on warmer nights when the windows are open. I have always made my home in train towns--Manassas first and most prominently. One place I lived, the tracks were so close that the whole place would violently shake when the train pounded by.
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After a migraine, I feel utterly naked, like all my skin has been stripped off. Tonight, I lie up in my bed alone, feeling the sheets and the cool air on my bare back, and cry, not because anything particularly hurts, but because I feel so vulnerable and raw. Crying is by far the worst thing about being a woman. To me it's worse than blood, or pain, or weakness. The way it rises in your chest like a viscous bubble of all the little disappointments, commonplace failures, small rejections and unimportant things that shouldn't bother you until it pops, and you're left with this sticky, shameful mess. Especially when it feels like it's not a controllable factor, just this rush of chemicals. I imagine it's exactly the negative, polar opposite of what ejaculating is to men.
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I found the tiniest little tick on my ribs this morning in the shower. Sucking down my good AB+.
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Something I thought I'd learned or meditated on or remembered during lent was this idea I got from my mother long ago, of treating my life like it was something I was holding in the very center of my palm. (I like hands.) The more I try to curl my fingers inward to clutch at it, the less I'd enjoy it, the less I would have. One can't compel blessings, or force the things one wants. She said it was better to hold my hand out flat and unprotected and open. This winter, my mantra was "I don't want anything" which might've took the idea too far in the wrong direction, but I don't know. Such little lessons.
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I think Earth Day is a little stupid. Every day we're here, right?
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