bloom where you're planted

so one of my oldest friends called me up a couple of months ago and invited me to participate in a beth moore bible study. did i tell you this? i can't remember.

i'd not heard from her for a couple of years. she's married. she has two little girls. i'm not the easiest of friends.

i'd check in with her a couple of times a year -- email her or leave a message -- but not get a reply.

until a couple of months ago...

so we're friends again, and i'm glad of that.

and maybe she's friends again because i'm in need of divine intervention. which i sure as shit need and for which i am immensely grateful. i'll take whatever light he cares to shine my way.

it's amazing how much a little companionship can alleviate the ugliness of despair. even though i know how difficult i make companionship for others.

reading self-help, religious nonfiction's not really my thing. but my friend reached out, offered help, and i've grabbed on, feebly yes, but grabbed, nonetheless, the tube she's tossed my way.

feebly means i'm way behind in my reading. like six chapters behind. and since i'm so far behind, i decided to skip ahead and fake catching up. so i read the chapters we were to discuss today, and, of course these chapters were about men's insecurity and how most women see men as gods or devils. and there was this:

some people cannot keep destruction to themselves. they spew it everywhere they go.

i am one of those people.

i don't want to be one those people, but that is what i know to be.

and there's this:

in all these years, i can't remember ever hearing a female say that she feels the need to prove that she's a woman. we tend to consider it a fact that was settled at conception. we may want to prove that we are desirable women, capable women, intelligent women, or even real women, but there's still a subtle difference.

sunday i went to olive garden with my family for lunch. the waiter takes my father's drink order, and then he looks to me to take mine, and he starts to say sir, but he stops himself. he takes the rest of my family's order, fetches the drinks, the bread, the salad. takes our orders. gets to me, and this time, he doesn't catch it so quickly. and for you, sir? ma'am?

so here you are, ms. moore. here's a girl who's in need of some help proving to the world that she's a woman.

my friend, and the two i've made at this study insist that he's an idiot, that it's on him, not me, that i'm obviously a girl...etc., etc. all the things i want to hear. all the things i would tell one of my friends if she'd been in that situation.

when i was seventeen or so, one of my peers, a guy i'd known since i was ten, a guy with whom i'd been on swim team and in art classes and from whom i'd lived down the street since i was eleven, this guy told me that i'd never get married because i was too ugly, and no one wanted to wake up next to something that ugly every morning.

not someone. some thing.

i'll be thirty-seven on monday. and there's no ring on my left ring finger. and there's no man in the picture. none even on any bit of the horizon.

and it occurred to me in class today that maybe the reason for that is because i need to commit to god to prove to him that i am capable of committing to someone else.

commitment, intimacy and trust aren't my things after all.

of course, it could be just that i need to get my head out of my ass.

on the way home, i passed a church whose sign caught my attention. so i exited the loop, turned around (twice, because i couldn't decide which way i wanted to go to get back to the sign so i could read its entirety), found my way back (eventually, because, of course, it took me longer than it would take a sensible person) and parked on the side of the road to read.

bloom where you're planted.

i'm trying. but lately, i feel like that grass that keeps trying to come up in the cracks of the concrete that the works progress folks come along and spray the green shit over so that it no longer grows.