As to be in plain sight.

Amanda and I visited the Denver Art Museum on Saturday. It was a free day, but even so, it was not an overly busy day at the museum, most likely because it was possibly the most perfect weather outside.

Everywhere in the museum, there were people looking at something. Of course they were; that's the nature of museums. You go to look. You go to see the Andy Warhol painting. You go to see the Renaissance art. You go to see the landscapes by Bierstadt.

There was one painting, however, that was getting passed by. I've probably passed it by myself, always drawn to the innocent, pastoral painting that neighbors it. Today, I noticed it out of the corner of my eye. A brilliant-colored painting with heartbreaking emotion. Dark, yet fantastical in its colors and subjects; tragic, yet overwhelmingly gorgeous in its technique. I felt a connection with it, something which I hadn't felt with any other paintings. I looked at it up close and far away, almost obsessed with it.

Yet, other people hardly noticed it. It was as if the painting was stuck in some hidden corner, where only some people could see, but not others. Some people glanced at the painting, but moved on quickly. Only one other person I saw really took in the painting as I had, and even his partner seemed disinterested.

I think the lack of interest in this painting was indicative of something deeper. This painting caused a deep emotional feeling, it caused sadness. It was difficult to look at because of the agony in the painting, and I think that made people scared to really look at it and appreciate it, even if they didn't know it themselves.

This made me think, however, of how much we avoid because we are afraid of it. Something that is so large, and obvious, and fantastic in its creation, is often too scary to deal with, and so we ignore it. We stay in a relationship because it is too scary to imagine being alone. We stay alone because it is too scary to imagine caring deeply about someone. We stay in routine because it is too scary to try something new. We stay in a job because it is too scary to attempt our true passions.

Often, these things we are scared of are right in front of us, and are usually the answers to our questions, but we are too afraid to admit it. What should we do? What should we say? What should we hope for? What should we not do? We know the answers to all these questions, but so often the answers scare us, so we ignore them. We pretend they aren't there, even though they're right in front of us, and aren't going anywhere.

Myself, my answer is writing. My answer is in that painting. My answer is in following my gut. And I'm scared. I'm so scared I feel surrounded in by jail bars. But I recognize I have a choice: I can avoid the answer, or I can recognize the answer and begin living my life as it's meant to be.

In search of a turning point.

I waited and waited and hoped and tried and worked and wished for something that made me feel like my life is different from what it has been.

I wanted something to prove that my life is different, that my lifestyle is different, that I am different.

Different from the person who was too scared to try, too scared to live, too scared to hope.

I hiked, farther and higher than I ever have before. Sometimes, standing on the mountainside, I remembered when my life was an avoidance of the outdoors, and a fear of not being capable of hiking up a mountainside.

I camped, for longer and in places I had never been. I spent an evening playing with my headlamp, my dad's camera and my friends, and I remembered when I never thought I would own a headlamp and when I thought I wanted to stay in hotels instead of under open skies.

I ran. I ran at all, which is more than I have ever done or ever thought I would do. Every time I pull on my running shoes, I remember when I was eleven, when I dreaded running in gym class. I remember the first time I felt like my lungs were going to explode during gym class in third grade. I remember feeling afraid of running after that lung-shredding pain.

I finished a 5K race. It was a fundraiser for the high school I worked at last year, and former students were waiting at the finish line.

"Ms. Hartlaub!" They shouted. "You finished!"

I almost threw up on their shoes.

And then I almost cried.

I remembered seventh grade, and the Presidential Fitness Test, and running a mile. I was the second to last person to finish the race, barely able to breathe, on the verge of tears. I hated every second, every step, every breath. From that moment on, I avoided any gym class that required running a mile, and I used my asthma as an excuse every day of my life that I didn't go running.

That same girl ran 3.1 miles on Saturday, August 25. That same girl, with the same asthma, and the same awkwardly long legs, and the same bad eyesight, finished in 32 minutes.

I realized my fears have changed. I am no longer controlled by the fear of pain, or of change, or of the unknown, or of the possibility of failure.

My fear now is of mediocrity, of settling, of being less than what I am capable of being.

I've hiked. I've camped. I've run.

I've changed.

Not for the faint of heart.

There's a bitch living inside my head.

I've heard therapists and self-help gurus and religious counselors give this voice/person/demon various polite names, including Lucifer, but the truth is, she is a Grade-A Bitch. And she knows it.

She follows me around constantly, never quiet. She points out the illegibly written journal entry, she makes fun of how I read the words aloud in my head as I write them, she hates my handwriting. She hates my writing. I misspell more words in a sentence than I have since first grade. She laughs at this.

At this very moment she is telling me what worthless shit this piece of writing is.

She is there when I meet new people. She analyzes the way I gripped their hands, and points out my palms are slightly sweaty, and the tops of my hands are dry, and I haven't trimmed my nails in too long. She tells me this without yelling, but it is still loud. My voice is too irritating and awkward, and I never know what to say. A more confident person would know what to say and how to make these other people like me.

She is there when I'm running. People are laughing at my shorts, which are too baggy for my thighs, and my hands are much too high when I run, making me look like an idiot and the one person in this world who actually doesn't naturally know how to run, and my lungs are hurting too much. Runners don't have painful breathing. Runners don't go as slow as me, either. Runners are stronger than me.

She is there in my past, bringing it up to the surface at the most inopportune times. She remembers really good moments that I ruined by being an idiot. She remembers my most embarrassing moments, my most shameful moments, and she likes to have them on repeat, like a movie she can't get enough of. She revels in the misery and the guilt and the shame. Especially the shame. The shame is proof I'm not good enough.

The Bitch wants me to give up everything. Teaching. Writing. Running. Traveling. Living. Everything except sitting on the couch, eating salted caramel gelato and watching the creative genius of other people. Then she can tell me I am A) a lazy asshole for not trying and B) not worth trying in the first place. She has it covered from all angles. She is a pro.

The Bitch doesn't always stay. She hasn't visited in a while, I don't think. At least her visits were becoming shorter and less frequent. But there was a crack, and even though she can fit through the tiniest crack, much like mice and their suddenly gelatinous bodies as they scurry through thread-like lines in walls and floors, this crack was large enough for her to maneuver with comfort.

I've dealt with the Bitch before. I've had help and I've been alone. But this time I'm not sure what to do about her. I fight against her, constantly. I paint myself beautiful bouquets in my head, that she immediately kills with poison. I give myself armor, but even armor has spaces in between the metal pieces. She finds those spaces. She is relentless and a champion archer, especially at such close range.

And yet, here I am. Writing. And running. And teaching. And living.

It's something.

Wordless Wednesday: Strangers and Art

These photos are my favorites from a long ago visit to the Denver Art Museum. The exhibit was a collection of street photographs of women, ranging from the 1950s through the 1970s. I loved the exhibit, and I enjoyed just watching visitors gaze and discuss the photographs. 

Black and White Priorities

Summer is ending and I am in complete denial. I am in so much denial that I have worn gym clothes for the past three days (I'm not divulging whether or not they're the same gym clothes for all three days).​ I'm not sure what gym clothes have to do with holding onto summer, but it has to do with something. I'm sure of that.

To be totally fair to myself, I did have surgery on Thursday, and I did have really bad side effects to the antibiotics and I did ask my mom several times if she was sure I wasn't dying. Every time I asked she told me she was sure I wasn't dying, and every time she answered I thought she was going to be so sorry she was wrong.​

But, here I am, still alive. My mother is right, yet again. And I have even washed my gym clothes, although I can't quite get myself out of them. I go back to work in a week, and this sudden end to my free time has left me pondering priorities. This summer, in fact, has gotten me thinking about priorities quite a bit, and my priorities never seemed so clear to me as when I was in Wyoming, in the Tetons and in Yellowstone. My life never seemed so clear to me as when I was sitting by Jenny Lake, gazing across the green-blue lake at the rocky peaks of the Tetons, watching the tadpoles swimming along the water edge, and reading my favorite book with the sun peaking through the tree branches. 

Here is what I knew to be important, in those moments:​

1. The outdoors. Or perhaps I should capitalize Outdoors, as I'm fairly certain nature is like another person, another friend, to me. ​I need to make time for some sort of outdoor activity, I need to make it a point, or my life feels too claustrophobic, too stuck. It took me almost 25 years to figure this out, but it seemed so obvious at Jenny Lake.

2. My health. My health for exploring the outdoors. For sitting by campfires late at night. For staying optimistic during long car rides. ​

3. The written word. Other people's written words. My own written words. This is my main art. ​

I say the written word is my main art form, but I can't help but admit to desiring some sort of greatness at photography and visual art. This is true for almost anything: I want to be great at it or I don't want to do it at all. And that's my cue for backing off, and realizing the goal is the experience, not the greatness. ​

PS. I also realized Facebook could completely crash and never come back and I would be happy with that. I expected it to be so much harder to be without a computer, but it was ridiculously easy to be without internet, without cell service, without any sort of technology, and I was actually quite sad when I realized I could check my e-mail from my phone yet again. 

Wordless Wednesday: Blue

 {I know...I said I'd have the new blog up and running by today. But, I don't. I'm really, truly, sorry. I'm working on the new site, but it's just not ready. I'm having really minor surgery tomorrow, after which I've been ordered to rest, but instead I'll work on the brand new website. That's how much I love you! It should be all set and ready to go by next week. I promise.}

A Letter to Myself, Number 1

Dear Me,

Please make time to write that story. You know what I'm talking about...the one that's sitting inside your heart right now. The one with that haunting image that won't leave your head, your heart, your soul. The one that you push aside and tell yourself, "You can't" but then you find a little snippet of the story in your journal and it touches something in you and suddenly you're right back to where you started, obsessing over some woman sitting in her car in a parking garage, or the same woman staring up at her rotating ceiling fan.

It's going to take a long time. Years probably. It's going to hurt. You'll essentially be pulling out a tiny, beating heart from inside of you and putting it out there into the universe. You have no patience, but it will have to be developed while you work on this story. It will take a lot of aching, a lot of pain, a lot of ink, a lot of paper, a lot of time.

But you must.

The woman is sitting there for a reason. Find out why.

Sincerely,

You