Apprehensive
–adjective
–adjective
| 1. | uneasy or fearful about something that might happen: apprehensive for the safety of the mountain climbers. |
| 2. | quick to learn or understand. |
3. perceptive; discerning
At the dawn of my life as a writer, this word was with me, it is with me now, and unless some miracle of confidence comes and blows a whole lot of pretty colored smoke up my butt, I have very few doubts that it will be with me in some measure until I die. In first grade, I asked a teacher to spell check the word in something or another, and she proceeded to tell me it was not a word. Well I'm here to tell her this: Honey, please. It's not just a word, it's a way of life Mrs. Hawkins.(P.S. you were right, 2nd grade was for punks. :)
It's a very confusing word because it implies both uneasiness and understanding, which are two words that haven't always been friends. Typically what we crave most desperately, comingin a close second to connection, is understanding, and when we cannot have understanding the uneasiness seeps in. It's like a slow flood through a neglected basement windowell. It drips in through the cracks of our knowledge and trickles down our walls and we never even see it coming. Moist misunderstanding saturates our carpets; a swamp beneath the tread of our lives. It festers, and eventually the stink of uneasiness comes once how very clueless we've been.
Apprehension does not imply this sort of slow progress. It implies the last of the stages of grief. This word infers uneasy acceptance and understanding. We know what is coming, what is in store for us, and both because of and in spite of this understanding we are afraid. It's a calmer fear because the danger has been assessed and we have been allowed the luxury of preparation.
I have lived with apprehension about my writing, my looks, my heart, my intentions, my future, my talent, capabilities, and most ardently, my relationships.
In a labrynth of loss and return and of the volatile rumblings of volcanic involuntary gypsyhood, I came to expect a certain selfishness from people. I began to expect certain selfishnesses from those around me regularly, and with time and growing apprehension to take those pertinences for my own at all the worst junctures, or after I'd already given nearly everything worth having away.
The point is not my innumerable fallabilities, it is that I am surprised. To my most delirious delight, I have stumbled on the truth. It started with a note from my cousin, Mikki, my childhood best friend and partner in crime, with whom I spent many panic driven evenings trying to clean the water spots off the giant mirrors after our baths so we didn't get in trouble for splashing. She told me that my family missed me so badly that they wanted to pay for a plane ticket for me to come there for Christmas since I hadn't been bothered to make the Idaho to Kansas sojourn any of the previous three years. At first I assumed that her extension relied mostly on polite pleasantries and the temporary nostalgia left-over from our time as Power Rangers.
Then a week or so later, I found myself with mangled feelings and a raised voice on a very long distance phone call, a very long distance from my happy place. A friend of mine, who I didn't even realize was a friend asked me why I was wasting so much breath and energy being angry, (of course he asked me in the lingo of a farm boy train engineer with a few very colorful four letter words for good measure). Assuming, basedon my previous understanding of life, people and relationships that I was backed into a corner, I began to defend myself, pretty snottily (I was in double trouble, and I'm only human). Because of the way my life was for a very long time, and because of the way my apprehensions always ran things, I found myself presuming to need a new place to stay since I had just pretty heavily insulted the roof over my head. I had definitely been uprooted for lesser transgressions.
I hung up the phone and went outside into the cold night expecting some sort of absolution from the prairie. Wishing for my conscience to be blown clean and the knowledge that I was, yet again, going to have to change everything, took hold of me.
"Get your ass in here and put on a coat, just cause your pissed doesn't mean you have to freeze to death."
And it was that simple. I was brought a coat. I was hugged, tickled, forgiven. I went inside.
A few weeks later another cousin of mine called who does a lot of work with non-traditional medicine and made me a very generous offer of help for my horrible eyes. His simple explanation, "Rachel, I love you. I don't care how long it's been. Come see me, we'll fix you up."
Have I really been this stubbornly afraid?
I have this song that I'm pretty obsessed with. It's called, "A Walk Through Hell." It's pretty amazing and it has this part goes like this "And I'll hold you in my weak arms like a first born, first born, first born." And you have to get in all three first borns, because the rise of emotion is really what does me in every time. I am suddenly aware of and uneasy with the fact that I may have been staring this sort of love in the eye all along. There are in fact tired arms ready to take me in, weary from being held out to me, when I knew I was alone. I understood that people were weak and confused, everyone around me as much so as I, and so were to be revered, treasured, but always seperate and on our own paths.
Our survival is based on our learning curve. How long does it take us to understand that the orange and black stripey cat thing likes to bite? How long does it take us to figure out that sticks rubbing together long and fast enough might make a fire? How long does it take to realize the guy who winks at us from across the bar is not dating material, no matter how good he is with his hair gel? So we learn, we think. We take the simple bits of information we can gather and we fortify ourselves with them and prepare for what we know is coming. Discovery shows us which things we are to be apprehensive of, and what is to be anticipated. What happens though, when our learning curves become malignencies, and all that we've been taught passes it's ripening point, and the rules change a bit. All the coins of our knowledge that we've managed to hoard becomes obsolete. What happens when we see a lovely orange housecat, who is dying to purr in our laps, but all we see is the tiger?
My reckoning is here. Now, that I am officially out of the jungle, maybe it's time to find out what each thing is for itself. I want to touch and feel and see and try everything.
I think what I'm trying to say here is, this just isn't working for me anymore, Apprehension. You've brought me through a lot, and I'm not sure if I'd have survived without you, but now we are holding each other back. I'll always love you in some way, but it's time we move on. It's not you, it's me. Okay that's not true, it's both of us. We've outgrown one another. I let you get bigger than me, and I'm too big to hide behind you. We have to let go, we'll always have Paris, kid. Wait....yeah, Humphrey Bogart does that one way better than me.
