He left a little bit of his sole behind.

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My kid brother (and he will always be my ‘kid’ brother; I don’t care if he’s over 40 now) and I had a typically contentious relationship growing up. We were primary playmates and chief rivals, great friends and terrible enemies. He always seemed to be underfoot and in my way when it was least convenient, yet was never anywhere to be found when I actually *wanted* him around.

One of the things I remember clearly from our childhood relationship is his jealousy.

While I don’t recall being particularly jealous of him – or of any of his things – he seemed to constantly be on the verge of a jealous rage about any and every thing I was or had or did. Often without merit.

One of the things it always struck me odd about his jealousy was that for several years – years in which I was growing by leaps and bounds – he was jealous of my shoes.

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Ten Inches

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photo of front side and back reflection of nude woman's shortened-by-ten-inches dyed red hair

That’s how much I cut on the first pass.

It only went up further from there.

(And then I saw red.)

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Sinful Sunday

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Is it ‘sinful’?

No.

(Does it matter? Nothing I post for Sinful Sunday ever is.)

It was…

Indulgent.

Risky.

Different.

Fun.

And it’s growing on me.

😉

Reminiscences: Musings in Memoir — Prompt #7

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PROMPT #7 — SHOES

Put on my blue suede shoes
And I boarded the plane
Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues
In the middle of the pouring rain

Marc Cohn

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Shoes: Sometimes we grow up having “big shoes to fill” or have to learn throughout our lives to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” — both concepts being about fitting into a ‘step’ that is not our own; one due to other people’s expectations, the other a requirement of acquiring empathy for others. Sometimes we try different shoes on for fit – either literally or metaphorically – and have to stumble around for a while before we realize they aren’t quite right for us. And there is also the idiom of “If the shoe fits…”

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Panic!

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The first time I had a panic attack, I didn’t know what was happening.

My chest was constricted. I couldn’t get a clear breath.

We were in the car.

My boyfriend kept reaching for me and other than seeing his hand continually coming at me (a hand I was using my own to furiously bat away), I was completely blind.

Hyperventilating.

Dizzy.

Nauseous.

My head felt both like it had shrunken to one-twelfth its size and also like it was about to explode.

I was frozen. Gasping. Falling through space while rooted to the passenger seat during an otherwise mundane drive.

When my vision started to black, my ‘flight’ response kicked in and I went from being completely unable to move one second to clawing out of my seatbelt and slamming shoulder-first into the door the next.

It didn’t dawn on me that I was in a moving vehicle.

There was, in fact, no ‘dawning’ of rational thought at all.

I was drowning in plain air. Desperate for space.

The only thing I knew in that cramped, airless moment was that I needed to escape.

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