It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funny what time does to a girl.<\/p>\n
We get older and we start to fumble and have mis-steps and flailing hands and incomplete thoughts. There was a time when I could slash an offender with a rapier wit that even David Sedaris would be knocked out by. I had ideas. I had nerve and gumption. There was a time when I could run circles around the other waiters in whatever restaurant I was working at (while going to school full time, while raising a son). I could do<\/em><\/strong> things! There was a time when I was kind of neat.<\/p>\n So I am having one those times in life when I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel like that girl anymore. Not only do I not feel like that<\/strong> girl, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel anything even remotely familiar to anything that I have ever felt before. It all started two nights ago when I went to work at a lovely little European caf\u00c3\u00a9 in East Nashville. I was witness to my own ineptitude and fumbling older self.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pretty.<\/p>\n This caf\u00c3\u00a9, it should be said, is full of beautiful, well put together folks that abound with utter confidence. They float about the caf\u00c3\u00a9 with serene smiles and such a crisp sense of self.\u00c2\u00a0 Enter me: tired, haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bought new clothes in three years, uncollected lady who can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t complete a thought and really needs a cup of coffee \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or a nap. It should also be said here that working in restaurants (the right one, anyway) is something I love to do. Granted, it is something I have<\/strong> to do on occasion (reminder: my husband\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an artist, I am a writer; we try to avoid the “starving” part of the artist bit) but it is something I truly enjoy and do quite well. If you find the right place you are gifted with the company of the smartest, funniest and savviest people you will ever meet.<\/p>\n Savvy I am no longer \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the last two years of nose-to-grindstone survival has taken some of my spunk and collectedness. I realized it when, walking up a flight of stairs, completely viewable to every person in the place, with two hands full of very expensive crystal glass ware, I stumbled (a nice way of saying that I completely busted my ass). I picked myself up, no broken glass, thinking \u00e2\u20ac\u0153jesus Lisa, what are you doing here???\u00e2\u20ac?<\/p>\n The night went downhill from there.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0I came home whimpering to my husband about how I have lost it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hack it with other people my age who have never let themselves get soggy with mundane, everyday life trials. I went through the whole horrible evening. I told him about how in incapable I was of having minute conversation, how uncomfortable I felt around people whom I normally have so much in common with, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stumble\u00e2\u20ac?, the aches in my legs and arms.. I sounded like an old lady with a bad back. It was miserable and silly.<\/p>\n Husbands are good for lots of reasons. Mine, specifically, can make anything seem a lot less horrid than it really is. He has a remarkable way of reminding me that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still neat, even if I feel (deep down) that he is just being nice. He gives good advice and makes sense of my crazy, illogical brain.<\/p>\n Husband\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s insightful words:\u00c2\u00a0 You aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever going to be that frightfully energetic and bounding-with-ambitiousness youth again \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which should be followed by a huge \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thank god\u00e2\u20ac?.\u00c2\u00a0 You get a chance, every once in awhile, to up your ante.\u00c2\u00a0 What you do with that chance is up to you. You have an opportunity to get better or you have the option to wallow in your lousiness. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing but growing pains. We have \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcem forever.\u00c2\u00a0 We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re meant to be better than we once were and to acknowledge that we aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as good as we can be yet \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in between therein lies a great land of awkwardness that sometimes crescendos with you face down on wooden stairs trying not to break your nose and praying that no one is looking at you. You then have an option, do you just succumb to your stumbling gracelessness and stop trying to sort yourself out, or do you get your self together so that you can move it on to better places? I suppose if you take the former option, then you may as well just get used to your face being smeared on the floor, even though at this point I feel like it is my assigned fate. Obviously, sorting yourself out seems like the more appetizing option.<\/p>\n So, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sorting myself out then and hopefully the growing pains and awkwardness won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t last much longer. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just be certain to stay focused and to watch for steep steps.<\/p>\n \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funny what time does to a girl. We get older and we start to fumble and have mis-steps and flailing hands and incomplete thoughts. There was a time when I could slash an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.familyresource.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}