Gra(y)ce: "A Lone Wolf Set Loose Upon North Georgia"

Today was my day off and my biggest goal was to sleep. Done. Woke up at ten. Delightful.

My family came to see me for a few hours and we sat in a park and talked and watched a squirrel literally do flips. Wouldn't you know I didn't have my camera.

I came back and wandered aimlessly for a while before settling down to a kind of sad movie. Not the best three and half hours of my life.

Then I went outside to write in a journal, which is below and the rest of the night will be in the pictures.

Melancholy.

It's not sadness, but it manifests itself similarly.

The feeling that there's a blender at the bottom of your chest. Like it's creating a vacuum that churns your stomach and pulls on your heart till your insides feel like an indistinguishable mass.

This is a symptom of sadness or of melancholy.

Sadness is an attack, but melancholy I think is simply a complete inability to process, brought on by exhaustion.

So in an effort to combat the melancholy that makes me want to curl up in a ball and sob till I am drained of everything that could be confused, I'm redirecting with a list of things that make my heart happy.

The perfect asymmetric design of the white clouds, stretched out across the perfect blue of the sky. A sky so blue that the exact color has never and will never be harnessed or trapped to any medium other than reality.
That Laura, our photographer, just narrated her approach to hug me. "A walk, into a run...into a...jump!"
That I woke up and put a skirt on. I literally always wear bike shorts on under my skirts and dresses, but stil, wearing it and feeling the wind move the fabric around my knees or hearing the swish sound it makes as I walk. Something about wearing skirts makes me want to run on my tiptoes and use the words, "Flit" and "Flutter".
Similarly, walking in bare feet. Something about being so solidly connected to the earth makes my hippie heart happy.
The phrase, "my hippie heart".
Finding different ways to capture and record life.
The silhouette of the leaves and trees against the sky.
Composition books and G2 pens.

This is all I have written in the entry. For the purposes of this blog I am continuing the list for the rest of the evening.

The smile on Danielle Harris's face and the way she let me borrow her car and escape the crazy melancholy of sitting by myself at camp.
Nearly every Ingrid Michelson, or He is We, song.
Overalls
The way my wheels turn while wandering Walmart alone.
The conversations you have at random with cashiers in Walmart or Ingles.
Sitting by myself at the counter in Huddle House and enjoying a Western omelet and cheesy hash browns.
The conversations that people have with each other. (I heard a lot about eating cake from the cooks at Huddle House).
The conversations that people have with me, especially after I tell them I can't eat bread. In case you were wondering the cook who expertly flipped my eggs in the pan by throwing it up in the air and catching it back "blows up" when she eats bread, but she still does. But she's starting to break the habit. She also compassionately scraped the griddle before cooking my food to get any break crumbs off.
People surprising you with unexpected compassion.
Finding a present for someone that makes them laugh.
The feeling of being back with people, because going so long without interaction left a small hole in my fabric of being that was only partially filled by hugging a bunch of people and laughing way too hard with Mary Beth and Katlyn.
The way writing is therapy, worship, creativity and a processor at the same time.