Who in the World Am I?

A few years ago my brother Thomas painted me a scene from Alice in Wonderland. It hangs in my upstairs hall right now.

I've always loved Alice. She was a regular girl who had a big (and super weird) adventure. Also, there is so much dialogue applicable to everyday life:

Curioser and curioser.

How can you read a book with no pictures?

We are all mad here.

I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.

I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one minute to another.

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.

You see? Alice really couldn't make much more sense.

Besides the fact that I generally love Alice, there is one major reason I love the painting Thomas made for me. (Okay, okay, besides the OTHER reason that my brother painted it for me.)

Thomas painted the scene where Alice gets stuck in the White Rabbit's house because she's grown too large after eating the "eat me" cookie. He painted her arms pushing up, up, up against the ceiling. Alice, too big for the situation. Too big for her circumstances. Just, really, too big for her life.

I feel like this Alice a lot. Not that I am something special, but often I feel too big for my situation. For my circumstances. For my life. Like I'm pushing on the edges of something bigger, but unfortunately all I'm accomplishing is just pushing against the roof, which is pushing back. Like if I got any bigger I just might burst ... or find myself falling, falling, falling through the center of the earth into Wonderland.

I don't know if this is what Thomas intended when he painted this for me, but I think about it every time I see it, which is multiple times a day. I think about little Alice, pushing against the roof of the house, her head touching the ceiling, her legs having nowhere to go. Too big for where she is, but not sure how to get smaller -- or how to get out.