my life shifting has created an earthquake.

I hear and feel it rumbling against my feet as I stand here on the precipice of the rest of my life. Or at least the next few years. My entire North Carolina life has suddenly shattered and I will be forced to recreate my existence. After ten years of the same, a month and half shy of 32, I have to change. The knowledge of this, makes me feel like I might either fall through the ground with the weight of my existence and the life I have created or I may just float away into the clouds after the feeling of being firmly rooted to the ground for so long. Both are disconcerting. There is also another little part of me that just wants to lie down and cry and sleep but that is not an option. My only option is to move forward, work harder and rebuild my life while the wreckage still smokes and the pieces are still salvageable. My children need me to. I need me to. I have sat here for 24 hours, teetering on the brink of despair every couple of hours, every twenty minutes and I have sat here for the past 24 hours, feeling the surges of strength that are truly in my nature. I love a challenge. I secretly love change and have sought it out in every other aspect of my life...forever. So why not view all of this that way? I know it is right but all of this still feels so wrong because although my nature embraces change, my human condition tries to fight it.
I am really just writing this because I just want all of you that love me and worry about me to know that I will do my best to be alright and I know that your love and friendship will be a huge help for me to do just that.
So far everybody has shown me that. It is an amazing help to know that even though the job that I just got fired from has left me feeling betrayed, I will always be grateful for the people that it has brought into my life and that are now my family.

death and life of a bird. my heart in my head.

I rode my bike fast, my heart in my head, the sun on my face and the wind at my back. I saw a bird fall from the sky dead as she twirled down to the right of me, thumping down into the grass. I stopped my bike and looked up, seeing nothing but clouds and hot blue sky. I crouched down and looked at the bird seeing how her feet were stretched back as though to cut through summer air, her wings cockeyed at different angles as though she had just paused, mid-flight to give herself over to death. Her body was still plump and whole...a mystery to me. How did this happen? Where did she come from? Did her body just give up? Her life already lived? I just crouched there for a while, watching her wings fluttering in the breeze as her body stiffened. So many thoughts ran through my head. Slippery ones that my mind could not hold onto for my heart was too big as it occupied all the space intended for logic. Slowly I stood, my legs creaking as I remembered that I too was moving closer to death. I felt dizzy for a moment as my eyes readjusted to the open space surrounding me. the hot asphalt shimmering in the sun, the cool green grass in a long strip beside me, my bike turned over onto the curb, its metal frame glinting in the bright light. I walked over to it uncertainly, feeling the weight of an unnamed emotion pushing my body down, slowing me up. I picked up my foreign seeming bike and felt its familiar weight in my hands as I got on, my feet finding the pedals out of memory, my body knowing the way as I rode away with my heart still firmly in my head. As I began to pick up speed, I looked down at the road below and saw this: a cracked open blue eggshell its broken imperfection fragile in the man-made street, formerly the home of a baby bird, its feathers probably now ruffling in the breeze of its newly found flight as my logical human mind reasserted itself and my heart found its way back to my chest. I now pumped the pedals faster, the sun on my face and the wind at my back, the looming truth of death now visible on the horizon.