Reading

  • The Writings of the New Testament
  • The Pursuit of God - Tozer

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Winter Jacket Day

By the title of this post you might think I'm going to talk about how today was cold and you needed a winterjacket, but you would be wrong, so very very wrong.
Winter Jacket Day is a term I have for a sort of day I experience everyonce and a while. So hold on, this is going to be good. Or at least...it will allow my to communicate with some of you much more efficiently if you understand this.

I'm not a big fan of winter jackets, I lived a whole year of school by only wearing a vest, hooded sweatshirt, scarf and mitts. I didn't want to have to wear a winter jacket. And as I stood there freezing in -20'C weather at 7:30 in the morning I was confident in my choice of clothes.

Have any of you had the experience where you need something from the back seat of your car and you reach back and cannot quite get it because your winter jacket gets in the way? And you know if you weren't wearing this huge jacket you would be able to reach it. Or you are walking up a tobogganing hill with your whole winter get-up on and it is taking forever, and you can't walk quite right because it feels like your clothes weigh so much, and your too warm or uncomfortable and yet cannot get away from these clothes you are wearing? Or you are moving someone's stuff in the winter, outside and you're winter clothing is causing every movement to be hindered in its fullness.

Well, I experience this a lot. I find winter jackets suffocating, they restrict every moment you make and sometimes when you are trying to get it off it feels like you might not ever be able too because it's stuck to you somehow, it has become one with your person, your whole person is restricted. In that moment of frustration I think of Arizona, where I could be completely warm with only a bathing suit on. I believe that does not help the situation and only increases the annoyance.

And sometimes, even when I'm not wearing a winter jacket I have that same feeling, that feeling of being restricted, suffocated, a lack of freedom. I never know quite what causes it but somedays that's just how i feel. most often in the winter. Those are winter jacket days. Those days when your person feels restricted somehow, unable to be free.

Now, after all that explanation I can say....today was a winter jacket day for me.

3 comments:

Lucid Elusion said...

Ahh, yes...

I know the feeling quite well. The almost half-conscious feeling of constriction, restraint & frustration all rolled in one--as if you were caught in the grasp of a huge fist, with your head sticking out one end & your feet, the other, all the while being squeezed by this gi-normous hand quite like one of those under-filled water balloons that never seem to break when you squeeze 'em in your hands. The feeling of being chained, tied up, knowing full well that you could move and breathe so much more (and so much better) if these fetters were just not in the way. The feeling of suffocation, being trapped. Coupled with the knowledge of attainable freedom being just out of reach. Its proximity almost laughing at you with disdain while you stretch out--fruitlessly--to even brush your fingertips against it. Yes, I know this feeling very well. It is one of the primary colours that paints the picture of my life over most of the past 6 years. It floods my house, seeping through the walls like my roommates' often ever-audible presence. It shrouds my dreams, obscuring them like a shower's mist upon a mirror. It curbs my relationships like the muddy banks of a winding river.
I find that it produces within me a welling-up of this unspecified & undirected yearning--a yearning to break forth, to break free and to run.

Yes, I know this feeling. I know it very well.
Let's hope your next day will not be coloured by its burden. Let's hope there will be no need for that winter jacket.


i just wish i knew how to take mine off...

David Hengen said...

dang, i can't comment after that guy.

Michelle said...

oh LIsa
I know how that feels. very well. somedays I have to go sit alone somewhere and just breathe because I feel like the world is acutally physically suffocating me... it's weird and nice to know that someone else experiences similar things

but I like winter jackets... they're cozy and they don't make me feel suffocated. i guess I'm lucky