Nothing Smaller Than Your Elbow

I remember the first time I saw rain from a distance. It was mesmerizing and beautiful. Sheets of translucent liquid poured onto the hills across the farm. Clint and I were sitting on the hot tin roof of his house and gazing across the fields. “It’s about three miles away,” he said. “How do you know?” I responded. “Just do.” I took his word for it and began to scan the sky in search of a rainbow. There had to be one since it was such a brilliantly sunny day and there was rain nearby. I found it. The rainbow’s colors poked its barely visible fingers above and through the top of the tree line at the bottom of the cow pasture. “There,” I said, as I pointed at the colors. Clint took my hand and wrapped his bony fingers around mine. Our palms were sweaty from leaning against the roof in the midsummer heat, but neither of us minded. We sat there until the rain slowly approached, and then began to fire small pellets of water onto our heads. We couldn’t wait much longer, or the roof would become a dangerous slip and slide that ended with a 50-foot drop to the ground. Clint leaned over and kissed my cheek, and then we made our way, carefully, across the roof and back into the window to his bedroom.

I was drawn to Clint for the same reason I must run my hand across the open flame of any candle I see. Clint was dangerous. Clint took risks. Clint did the “wrong” things. Whenever his parents told us we couldn’t take the four-wheeler out for joyrides, we plotted to wake up well before dawn and sneak off into the woods, pushing the four-wheeler out of earshot before hopping on and spending a few hours riding like crazy. Even though we both knew the dangers of smoking, we rolled up magazine papers with grass from the field and filled our lungs with the acridest, disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted. (Hopefully not amassing too much damage to our lungs in the process) When his aunt was not in her barbershop, cutting old people’s hair, we would sneak in and jiggle the old-timey coke machine until we both had ice-cold beverages to drink behind the barn. With Clint, I felt like we did all the wrong things and it made my world just a little more “right.”

I find myself reminiscing about the summers I spent with Clint and his family as a kid. I got into a lot of trouble over those summers, but it sure was fun. Dare I say that any punishment I faced for our shenanigans was “worth it?” Yeah. I’d say that. Because during those times, I learned things about myself that I would not have learned otherwise. I learned that doing the “wrong” thing is often how we figure out how the world works.

So very often, these days, I find myself drawn to the “wrong” things, or thinking about things the “wrong” way. Well, I’m here to say to those that believe there is a right or wrong way to think, “Kiss my ass.” I believe that we are all created by our Creator to think differently, act differently, and generally, be different.

News flash: I am different. I’ve always been different. More than likely, I’ll always be different. I’m coming to terms with that.

Being different can be very lonely. When the people I am surrounded by are thinking about the world so differently than I do, I feel very much alone. When I feel things so deeply that I don’t have words for it, people don’t understand me. They are afraid of my difference. When I am overwhelmed by the heaviness of the world, people don’t understand why I don’t just “shake it off.” “It’s not your problem,” they say, “it’s not yours to feel.” They do not understand that I feel it anyway.

I’m an ENFP. Every time I’ve taken the analysis, there’s never been a variance in the results—for each category, I am extremely E, N, F, and P. I’m an extrovert. I’m intuitive. I’m a feeler. And I’m perceptive. This is the way I see the world. I think if I had a choice in the matter, I’d probably choose to be an ISTJ. Which is exactly opposite of what I am. Funny, huh. We always want to be or have what we aren’t or don’t have.

There are very few people in my life that “get it”. I am so thankful to have found those people that do, and I treasure those relationships more than anything in the world. I guess my “E” is just feeling a little bit isolated in the midst of this journey. Hence, the writing. Writing helps. It always does.

So, what’s with the title? I got the end of a q-tip stuck in my ear once when I was cleaning them. I had to have it removed by a doctor. I asked the doctor, if not a q-tip, what should I be using to clean my ears? “Nothing smaller than your elbow.”

I still use q-tips to clean my ears. It may be the “wrong” thing, but it feels so right!