sometimes i feel so ruined. like i've dedicated so much of my life to the wrong things. my body is all distorted, i started my career path too late, i'm old--not really old, as in literally old, but i'm suddenly thirty. for so long i've been 15-20 in my mind, it still surprises me to realize that i'm an adult. i have three kids! i've been parenting for a giant portion of my life, for my entire adult life. i spent so much of my life, nearly my whole life, dedicated to things other than my own self. to men and what they needed, or to school and what that meant i was supposed to do or be. i'm only just discovering who i am, what i want to do and to be. and so it's good that i'm so young--literally, this time. only thirty. i have years to do this life thing. i can take this time to explore who i am, what i want, what i do when there aren't a hundred things i have to do to make someone else's life go smoothly. i feel angry and bitter sometimes, that i willingly gave of myself--my time, my energy, my creativity--to what i thought was my family, to my partners, the men supposed to be living a life in concert with me. and they took what i offered and they didn't reciprocate. they didn't appreciate what i did for them, with them, in honor of them. they didn't deserve me. and i didn't deserve what they did. and i don't say this to blame or accuse. i took part in it, i willingly gave up myself. i did it because i suppose i thought it meant something, because i believed in the family, in the life in concert, in the partnership. it was my own mistake, i claim that responsibility. i have no idea how to move on from here. i have no idea how i will ever trust a man again, or myself to judge reasonably, or trust the idea of partnership, or the hope of a family...which is still a burning urge of mine, to have one of those family unit things, where there is a mom and a dad and some kids, and everyone works together to make a sum grander than all the parts. but one where everyone's dreams are approved of, worked toward. even the mommy. i have no idea if that's even reasonable. do people do that? it seems like they should, but i don't really know...and i don't know how to get it when i feel so totally ruined and used up. how a man could ever want me. how i could ever be vulnerable again. how i could even want what i want. let alone create it or find it or be it. i'm satisfied at the moment, just being myself. being the mom, the student, the artist, the photographer. claiming my space as my own. not worrying just yet about that other stuff. i have this--possibly wrong--notion that all will be revealed when i'm ready, and that all i have to do right now is take care of the present moment, the kids, the studies, the arts, the self. and when i'm ready, and when it's time, something will happen which will be better than whatever i could imagine, or try to hope for, and that when it happens i will see it for what it is and will know what to do.
we shall see.
i am grateful for:
light
movement
sturdiness
cheese
those moments when another person sees you for who you are and detects exactly what you need and serves it to you just so.
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an excerpt from a work-in-progress
they ate breakfast together: an omlettle he made filled with spinach and cream cheese and tomatoes and a bagel they split with salmon and more of the cream cheese and some capers she went back to the fridge for. they amused themselves discussing what capers are and how they came to be in jars at upscale markets for them to buy and eat on bagels with salmon. he liked to think they came from the sea somehow, and she assured him they were really little berries of some sort of fragrant bush. she fished the capers out of the tall jar as they talked and ate more than usual, something about their brininess described a hunger for her that she didn’t know she had, and then filled it. they drank steaming mugs of rich coffee with cream (and two sugars in his). she loaded the dishwasher and wiped off the counter while he cleaned the coffeegrounds and little spills from the coffee pot. the sun shone cleanly into their white kitchen and onto their bodies as they moved about their tasks and then they kissed one another and left for work, him to an office in town and her upstairs to her office where she worked as a freelance ad designer. it was a perfect morning. it was the perfect morning.
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1 comment:
Bravo!!!
For now, keep claiming the space you NEED.
And you are not ruined, because the only way you learn who you are or what to do, is by living, and the only way to live is to do, and see, and think, and learn, and try, and so on and on.
My philosophy for now is; To do the things that need doing, and nothing more. :)
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