Thursday, March 10, 2016

God told me to stop moving

My day began innocently enough. I was getting ready for work and I went out to the horse trailer to get grain for the horses. Because of the rain they had not come up in several days and I had not been able to drive the seed down to the barn so I went inside to fill a bucket with their feet and walked to the barn as they followed me. I let Bailey off the chain, where she has been tied up since Monday when she got in trouble for getting into the neighbor's truck and tearing up their trash. I put Hammond on his electric collar to test it and see if he would stay in the yard as we walked away. I went into the trailer and scooped out the feed and went to the back of the trailer to leave, only I couldn't. The door to the trailer blew shut in a gust of wind and latched.

My first thought was darn it I'm going to be late. My second thought was how am I ever going to get out of here? My other thoughts went rapidly from there. At first I decided to make use of my time and clean up the trailer. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, Maggie has already done a really good job of cleaning the trailer so there wasn't much to do. I took down the hanging storage rack that wasn't doing me much good and cleaned up all the little odds and ends I found. I made a pile of trash. I decided to assemble the little wheelbarrow Maggie had bought for me, only to discover it didn't need any assembly. I decided to set at Maggies panic so I could at least have a comfortable place to sit and or lie while waiting to be rescued. Only I couldn't get it to set up properly. I read the back of the feed sack and beet pulp sack... Fascinating.

I was starting to get a little chilly so I picked up Dixie's blanket. I had come out in my PJs and some tiny little shoes so I wasn't really dressed for anything other than going back into the house to take a shower. I had a bale of alfalfa and a bale of hay. I wrapped myself up in the blanket trying to find a comfortable position for which to spend my time. I was happy it was not raining.

I remembered the time at a natrc ride when Elaine had been locked in her trailer during a storm. She had gone through from the living quarters and gotten stuck there. She spent the night but there were people around and so she got out relatively soon the next morning. The reality of the fact that I live completely alone started to set in. While I have giggled many times about what happened to poor Elaine, I doubt I ever would again.

I began to realize how precarious my situation was. Eventually some of my clients might miss me. But would they know who to call? 1 hour became two and stretched on.   I started to panic because I did not like the feeling of being trapped in there and having nothing to do. I realized that God wanted me just to sit still for a while. So I did.

I spend some time praying about what I should be doing and how to carry on with some relationships that I have. I came to the realization that certain relationships need to go but I also came to the realization that it is never easy to let these relationships go.  In this case I care about the person very much I just realized that they are bad for me right now. I have baggage I am working through but they also have baggage. Their baggage is something I can't help them with. The other day they were complaining to me about how I am too busy for them and they are too busy for me. I realize that it's all true. But how do you explain to the person that you care about that you can't be together even if you care for one another. How do you give up friends who have been such an important part of your life  because it's time to move forward? I practiced this conversation over and over but of course the people I need to talk to weren't  there so I could only imagine their part of the conversation would go. In any case it did not go well.

I thought about some new friendships I have and how I hope that they take off and become more. I wondered how you know if someone is a good person to date or not. Or when I should date if ever. If I ever want to get married again or if I always just want to be single from now on. I wondered again how long it would take for someone to realize I was missing. I found myself wondering if I would matter when people realize I was missing. I realize this was just a moment of self-pity but I still wondered it and it was still not a good feeling.

Having just watched an episode of the agents.of.s.h.i.e.l.d where a character realized she could go one hundred hours without water, I wondered if I would be stuck in the trailer for 100 hours. I realized that it was most likely the neighbor would be home when school got out and then I would hear him come back and that I could shout for help then. I also thought that my phone would probably quit working and then people would know I really was missing and hopefully they would call Teresa who would come down and check on me.  Mostly I just realized how bored I was without something to read or crochet or watch or listen to.

So I prayed, and rehearsed conversations, and cried, and finally napped. I was very happy to have the blanket and then also a pad to put over my head as I got pretty chilly.   I thought about how people with no homes must feel when they don't have anything except newspaper or maybe some cardboard the cover up with. I did it try to get out of the trailer but could not figure out a way to trip the latch from the inside. Note to self: next trailer needs escape door. And even better a walk through door. Of course both of them may have been left unlocked as well in which case I would have still been screwed.

About 12:30 p.m. I heard Bailey bark. She had stayed in the yard, under the truck the entire time. I heard some banging from up the hill and started to holler. Josh, my neighbor,  heard me and came down and let me out of the trailer. He asked me how I came to be in there and I told him. Poor guy he could not help himself but laugh even though I was pretty stressed out. I came in the house and had 7 messages left for me on my phone from people looking for me. As I called each one back they could not help but laugh as well. I agree that it is funny and I think that I will be able to laugh eventually. But right now it doesn't seem very funny I felt pretty alone and worried that I would be stuck there a long time. In retrospect part of what bothered me about being left in the trailer was not being alone or even not being able to call out and talk to anyone it was having nothing to do. But that was probably part of the lesson I needed to learn. I discovered it was possible to sit And not have anything to do but yet not sleep either. I did a lot of good thinking and I have made some decisions that I have to move forward on even though they will be uncomfortable.

And now I am taking the rest of the day off. I will catch up on the Agents of Shield and I will crochet and by evening I may even do some paperwork. But I really believe the lesson here was that I have too many responsibilities and that sometimes I have to just tell the world that I have to get off and stop