Rag Doll

A cold has fallen early, with temperatures about ten degrees cooler than usual for this time of year. The sky hangs mute and grey like an uncomfortable blanket, with a thin wind blowing its chilly air indifferently through the dry, fallen leaves scattering them all over the lawn and street. I wrap my mind around the day, and decide to take a break from an embroidery project I am close to finally finishing. Just yesterday, I reconnected with another friend from my graduate school days in Austin, Texas, a good friend from Panama City. This friend always had this ability to make me laugh, a quality I always treasured in him. He travels a lot as an engineer,and catching up to his life brought home my quiet life, that rarely sees travel these days. The feeling of a rag doll came to mind, with the rag doll being me. Someone who never really broke free of her limitations, from being ignored by my mother, feeling inadequate for very long, willing to fore go my own dreams and talents, because the strength was never put in me to stand up for myself, until just the last couple of years. A rag doll is easy to fold into a smaller shape, bends easily, and is sweet and vulnerable, but that very vulnerability is her strength, because you can drop her to the floor, throw her even, and she will not break. And that is how I often have felt, without understanding it, until very recently. Vulnerable but also resilient. And that resilience has gotten me through, each time. Another thing about a rag doll that I can relate to, is that a rag doll is not exactly built for fast motion. No batteries, but also no remote control. The longing to break free, to tear down walls invisible but to me, to set myself and my talents free, to cease being a rag doll, and become a bird with working wings. I try this one day at a time, one awareness at a time, to tear down a life time of crippling convictions and rebuild myself from scratch. That takes insight, determination, patience, some measure of luck and no small amount of faith and good humour. Some of us are built for speed, some for endurance, others yet for style, or sturdiness, some to inspire innovation, others to just stand the test of time.  And some of us are easily overlooked, because we are built to overcome, to survive.