Musings | Debra R. Borys

Drama Queen is an essay I wrote while I was a volunteer with the Night Ministry. It was one of the first times I found my heart so touched by one of the youth I worked with, that I felt like I cared as much for him as I do my own family.

The essay was accepted by Ascent Aspirations magazines and is now available to read on their website. The full essay can be read by clicking on the link below. I hope you enjoy it. It still makes me tear up when I read it.

Drama Queen, that’s what they call him. Don’t encourage him. When he tells you his girlfriend died in his arms, don’t sympathize. When he tells you he was the right hand man of the Kings’ LA gang leader, or that he murdered thirteen people, don’t look shocked. He’s bi-polar, he’s twenty-one, he’s homeless and delusional. Change the subject, turn a deaf ear, keep him grounded.

Don’t see him as the ragged, head-shorn punk with black trench coat and dark glasses, or with white puckered lines of scars where he used to cut himself. See him the way he was that day you first met him, at the gate of Six Flags Great America, being asked to turn in the dog chain that hung from his belt loop. See him as part of the group of homeless youth being taken for an outing by a shelter from Chicago’s north side. He was skinny, really, even if he did strut around like he was hot stuff and brag about how he used to deal drugs and slept with about a hundred girls. He blew the little bit of money they gave him trying to win cheap, pathetic prizes and didn’t even seem to realize how lousy he played. He didn’t have a chance. He was a loser.

I remember the thought that went through my mind when he talked about how many stuffed animals he won for this girl he knew back on the east coast. I just smiled, sure I saw right through him. Just another bullshitter trying to convince us his life doesn’t suck.

via Drama Queen by Debra R. Borys.

I spend much of my time hunkered in front of my computer these days. Writing, promoting, looking for freelance gigs, networking. All much more easily done in the winter with gray skies and cold temps outside the door.

I have been getting at least some exercise–you can’t own a dog and not get some. Sophie and I usually take a 30-60 minute walk in the middle of the day if it’s not raining and I’m not swamped with deadlines.

But while research feeds my mind and exercise strengthens my body, there is a far more important part of myself I too often forget.

The other day when it was sunny though cold out, I decided our usual pedestrian route was too boring so Sophie and I drove to Alki Point and walked along there for a while. Sophie was delighted to have new territory to explore, especially when it included green grass she could run in and I could not but be delighted to watch her joyfulness.

Today I felt like crap all morning. Woke up with a headache, kept getting sidetracked from the project I’m supposed to be working on, and felt tired from the moment I got out of bed. But Sophie is irresistible when she gives me that expectant look just after lunch is digested. Since I wasn’t up to our usual downhill then uphill walk, we drove to Alki again, thinking at least it was a flat walk.

I need to have crap days more often, because this one led to a rejuvenation I wasn’t expecting.

Was it the crisp, fresh air blowing in from the ocean filling my lungs? Was it the long view across the water that always tastes like a cold drink of water on a hot summer day, no matter how cold the day actually is? Was it the crash of the waves or the arc of the seagulls in the blue sky, or the joyful dog trotting from smell to smell like a kid who’s just discovered candy?

It was more than that, it was all of that. While these things happened, my soul took a huge indrawn breath. My center drank it in and began to freshen and green up again. The essence that has always been there, always is there, entered my consciousness again, reminding me I am not only, I am all. I am connected to these things in nature–I am nature, one of the threads in a massive tapestry that lives and breaths and has life.

Whether or not you believe in God or any kind of higher power, there is a part of you that knows this, too. This part of you–your soul, your spirit, your id, whatever you want to call it–needs to be fed. Water, sky, wind and mountains feed my soul. What feeds yours?

Maybe this breathtaking video of murmuring swallows will serve as an appetizer;