On the Bridge

This evening I felt like I was walking through a painting.

(If I was as clever as Sam, I'd have several pictures to back this up...)

It's pretty warm for winter right now, and the snow is starting to look delicate. There are patches of grass and puddles everywhere.

When I finished work, I walked across the bridge listening to an old song by Jars of Clay that I swore I took off my ipod months ago. Regardless, I listened to it as I walked, feeling the never failing gust of wind sweep my hair every which way. (Ah the ever faithful, ever chilly footbridge)
My thoughts were concentrated on the Chippewa river beneath the bridge, (looking sooo much deeper than it actually is) the deep cracks in the ice, the deep pools of water that seem to get bigger and bigger with every raise of a degree. It was a little past five and the sun was beginning to set, casting a red and pink hue to the clouds that swept past Towers. And I saw God in every movement. And I saw reason in every movement.

And despite being on the freezing cold bridge (although it wasn't completely cold out, the bridge acts as a wind tunnel. It's enough to make you shiver) I stopped and just stared. And I thought about how lucky I was to be there. And how lucky I was to be alive and well and whole again. I'm steadily approaching the one year marker where the perfectly planned fabric of my life unwound from so many angles that it pulled apart completely. It's unnerving to think that I was ever that vulnerable, or rather, that I ever so affected by so many things at once. Even though I feel self-conscious and awkward now, I feel much stronger, tougher. I feel, in retrospect, that I learned a lot from my Senior year of high school (and I can't believe I cried THAT MUCH. Holy crap.)

And even as tonight took a ridiculous turn for the worst, I tried my best to keep a cool head through my anger. The only thing I wished for was for one person to just get me. To just understand what I was feeling, know exactly what and why I was thinking it, and know where I was coming from. My mom is the closest thing I have to that now, and she wasn't around tonight (which sucks). And yet, even in wishing that, dealing with it by myself makes me stronger, I suppose.