When it comes to relationships I don't like gray areas. I like it to be black or white- saves me a lot of angst. It's been one of the nicest things about marriage, not having to waste my time and energy trying to figure out some guy. I have never been good at the 'dating game'. I wear my wants, needs, feelings and expectations on my sleeve and it usually turns the guy off. I have a hunch that dating men in my generation might be easier now, that they just might be ready for a woman like me and a lot of them are fathers themselves with needs and expectations that more closely match mine. Or perhaps I'm being totally idealistic which is another reason I sucked at dating. Why so much thought on the subject? My husband and I have decided to separate and will be doing so about two months after our five year anniversary. We have not been able to reach a compromise on having an open marriage, namely I am not able to promise him complete fidelity and he can not offer me the freedom I desire. We came to the decision peaceably enough with no yelling or screaming but not without heavy hearts and lots of tears on my part. We've been going regularly to a marriage counselor that the Military provides and this one is actually really good. We tried with one guy who flicked his tongue like a reptile which was too disconcerting and then we tried with a chaplain right before my husband deployed who was very nice and didn't bring religion into the sessions thankfully but I was uncomfortable discussing my unorthodox relationship desires with him. So this new guy is very good at what he does and we have made a fair amount of progress in our communicating. Since we started seeing him the focus has changed from saving the marriage to navigating separation and divorce and I am very thankful we will have help during this time. Our sessions have brought to light many key and core differences and have helped me to realize that the marriage isn't necessarily ending because of the open marriage disagreement. I now see that I want and need a partner who is willing and capable of expanding their mind around a different relationship concept. That the world has changed and as a result people do business differently, dress differently, priorities have changed, religion is adapting and people relate differently. I want a partner who can love, cherish and honor me and who is not threatened by the idea of me exploring a connection with some one else. I desire a partner who is not wholly ruled by their ego, who can identify when fear is fueled by jealousy and ego and can work through and beyond it, who can help me work through and beyond mine. I want to grow and expand with someone in the ways that I live and love. Long before we had children and long before I was aware of this yearning in myself I would have thought my husband eager to explore this new way of loving but I have learned that he is comfortable in the traditional ways of love and as much as I wish it could be different I have to accept that it is OK. He is not backwards or ignorant, he is who he is and I am who I am and as much as we love one another we can no longer fulfill each others needs. He said in one of our last sessions that I see myself as a big fish in a big pond and he sees himself as a small fish in a small pond and the concept and realization exploded in my head. I have much broader visions of my future and he is content with much less and should we stay together he would always resist my greater needs and feel threatened by them. I can't shrink myself to fit into his dream and he should not compromise his happiness to fulfill mine either.
And yet there will be a few times each day that I am ready to compromise myself, ready to stifle my longings. I start to believe when he says that I am making a big mistake and will always regret this- that I will always be unhappy because I can't be happy with what I have. I just want to stay together, to avoid all of this hurt, to keep the children from the inevitable pain. After all we do love each other immensely. But then I call a good friend and she reminds me that I am an amazing woman with so much to offer and that if my closest friends thought I was making a mistake they would have hopped on a plane by now to come shake some sense into me. As much as they all love my husband they are all rooting for the separation. They have heard my unhappiness for the past five years and they have faith that there is a better match for me out there and once I know that kind of love I will be shocked that I lived so long with out it. I want that for my husband too. These days he is sleeping downstairs and we are trying to establish some healthy ground rules, boundaries. He suggests that we not have sex any more so that we can focus on our friendship which is the most important thing since it has to live on after the marriage. We make love that same night. We manage to stay some what aloof for a few days then we get a christmas tree and decorate it with the kids and we go for a walk in the snow by the quiet river. We need each other. We need to be held. We want to feel close because neither of us can stand for long the thought of being apart. After making love there is a heaviness that is almost worse than the heaviness that preceded the act.
I grieve a lot. I have amazing friends who help me through this but there is a six hour time difference between us so there is a lot of quiet and lately I have been filling it with nonsense. Dumb TV shows and trashy magazines. I am trying to escape into other realities which is ultimately very unhealthy for me. This stuff is like a gate way drug for me because then I start drinking wine every night and can't go to the gym in the morning because I'm too dehydrated and then I start sugar bingeing... It's a bad cycle lemme tell ya. I have one girlfriend who although is not married and doesn't have children ,is going through a very similar thing. We have been amazed at how parallel our experiences have been and grateful that there is some one else out there who can relate. She is working up the courage to make the break with her lover and asked me to write her a letter of encouragement that she can refer too when feeling weak and low. It ended up being more for the both of us:
I've been feeling so low. So this is for us. I need to hold on to this as much as you. We have a whole wonderful, beautiful life ahead of us. We have good loving and true love- maybe even loves ahead of us. This difficult, lonely, heartbreaking time is but the blink of an eye in a long, long life. Both of our lovers were instrumental in helping to form us into the women we are today but our relationships with them do not define us, nor the ending of these relationships... It's what we have in our hearts and minds that defines us, our dreams we are working hard to reach, the immense amount of love and support we get and give defines us because WE have drawn that into our lives. One of the hardest facts is that we are all alone, when we're happy, when we're sad whether married, single or swingin', we're all alone. So it's of the utmost importance that we listen to ourselves and guide ourselves and trust ourselves. It's important that we forgive ourselves when we fail at any of the above. Some nights we will feel so lonely, our beds will be so empty that we will hug ourselves to feel warmth, pull the pillows to our backs to feel some one there. I've lived through that and can do it again. We will also feel the sun on our faces, the smooth pull of water over our bodies, the strength of our legs on a mountain trail, the hug of a dear friend, the kiss of a new lover and the electricity that follows and spreads over our whole being. We'll smell the damp earth pregnant with life and death, warm pine needles, salty air, freshly baking bread, babies sweet breath. Man- there is so much to be joyful for and we need to hold onto these truths because we both have important work immediately at hand and shit is going to be difficult for a while. I have two little children to protect from the pain of this separation, you have no choice but to keep yourself immersed in your studies because you are going to be a DOCTOR!! You are going to change peoples lives! So it's not just for ourselves we will plug on through this- it's for my son and daughter and those countless people who will feel your healing hands.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
WAR
I am a strong advocate of autonomy but believe deployment is not a positive autonomous experience and is psychological warfare on relationships. The soldier who is in a war zone is put in a situation that requires them to act in a manner based solely on self preservation far from the values and morals that we are raised with in our society. They are not likely to share with the loved ones at home what they are experiencing or doing to protect the loved ones from worrying. The loved one(es) therefore cannot fully understand what the soldier is going through and may not be able to give the right kind of support or assurance the soldier may be yearning for. When the soldier comes home they are expected to switch gears and smoothly transition back into normal society where they may fear that what they have done or the choices they may have made under duress, may be viewed with disgust and aversion. This creates an environment where the soldier can not open up and share their experience and leaves the loved one in a position where they are unable to reach out and heal and show unconditional love and understanding. A wall is often created where the soldier suffers in silence thinking that they are still protecting their partner from the shame and embarrassment that they themselves are feeling but in fact their partner may be feeling lost, shut out and angry. This may help to explain in part why there is a 60-70% divorce rate in the Army...
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. -A.N.
My husband was in Afghanistan for 6 months and at some point during that time I started to re-awaken. I was watching a very steamy scene on TV and normally I would have felt nauseous but this time my body reacted with warm tingles. Suddenly everything was in working order and I felt like I just might eat a man alive if the opportunity presented itself. After years of feeling deadened and ashamed of my lack of desire and response I felt healthy and alive again. For the first time since getting together with my husband 6 years ago, I felt desire for another man. There is something big that happens to a woman's sexuality after having children. I feel like I own it more than I ever did as a young woman and it no longer makes me nervous as it once did when I would receive unwanted cat calls or attention. I had started seeing a therapist when I went on anti-depressants and he recommended that I look into Anais Nin. I believe he suggested her to me so that I wouldn't feel so alone in some of my thoughts and ideas, so that I had some one to identify with. She was a very unconventional woman for her time and lived a very forward life. I found right away when I started reading her journals that we shared many traits. For a long while now I have been interested in exploring an open marriage. Not for the reasons most would assume though. It's not, for me, about needing or wanting to have sex with other men to satisfy a great sexual hunger or to replace my absent father. Rather I like to imagine having such a strong and solid love with someone that we could allow each other autonomous intellectual and sexual experiences outside of our marriage. Quite frankly I'm not interested in only making love to one man for the rest of my life. I never thought too much about getting married before I did or about what the institution of marriage meant to me. I've had lots of time to reflect on it since marrying and I find it odd that the way we prove and declare love for our partner is to deny ourselves what we desire for the rest of our lives. Now another thing that I have come to believe is that staying with one person and working on and focusing on that one relationship for a long time allows for personal growth that is unlikely if you are always playing the field or spreading yourself around. Once you have allowed yourself to be totally vulnerable and once you feel that sense of security in a relationship then you can focus on yourself and the problems you work through with your partner teach you and help you to grow as a human. I believe in long term and loyal relationships and I want to have that but loyalty, to me, does not mean total sacrifice. What about being loyal to yourself? What about the ways you can grow and learn through other people? What if being lovers for a time with another person allows you to expand in a direction you weren't with your partner or just jump starts your body and mind? Anais had an open marriage and many lovers but her reasons were different than mine. Still it felt nice to feel that she would have understood me and not judged me to be an awful wife.
My husband is not interested in pursuing this type of relationship and it will, at some point, become too great a difference for us to put aside. For now it is not something we speak of. And I understand why. For years he's felt unwanted and insecure because of my lack of desire towards him, like he's going to be ok with me wanting to be with other men. I knew not to push it until we were doing better. About two and a half months into his deployment we decided to separate. There was a lot of back and forth and painful things said that led up to it and the decision didn't hold very long- about three weeks I think. When we decided to keep trying there was a rush of new excitement and energy into our relationship and I felt hope which had been missing for a while. During our brief separation I had started flirting with an old friend online. Nothing overt or indiscreet but provocative, slightly veiled and exciting. My creativity flowed freely again in my emails to him and my imagination ran wild. When my husband and I decided to keep trying I didn't immediately inform this other man because I couldn't stand the thought of not having the excitement of that interaction in my life. The energy did eventually shift back into an appropriate realm but it wasn't really my doing and i knew that if given the opportunity, I would take things much further. My husband and I separated once more about a month before he was due to come back and again we decided to keep trying only this time I didn't feel as much hope and since that time I have felt that I have one foot out the door and can't really, fully invest in us. Upon his return the sex was great which relieved my fears that my newly awakened sexuality wouldn't translate into our marriage and we immediately prepared for a month long trip back to the States to see friends and family.
My husband is not interested in pursuing this type of relationship and it will, at some point, become too great a difference for us to put aside. For now it is not something we speak of. And I understand why. For years he's felt unwanted and insecure because of my lack of desire towards him, like he's going to be ok with me wanting to be with other men. I knew not to push it until we were doing better. About two and a half months into his deployment we decided to separate. There was a lot of back and forth and painful things said that led up to it and the decision didn't hold very long- about three weeks I think. When we decided to keep trying there was a rush of new excitement and energy into our relationship and I felt hope which had been missing for a while. During our brief separation I had started flirting with an old friend online. Nothing overt or indiscreet but provocative, slightly veiled and exciting. My creativity flowed freely again in my emails to him and my imagination ran wild. When my husband and I decided to keep trying I didn't immediately inform this other man because I couldn't stand the thought of not having the excitement of that interaction in my life. The energy did eventually shift back into an appropriate realm but it wasn't really my doing and i knew that if given the opportunity, I would take things much further. My husband and I separated once more about a month before he was due to come back and again we decided to keep trying only this time I didn't feel as much hope and since that time I have felt that I have one foot out the door and can't really, fully invest in us. Upon his return the sex was great which relieved my fears that my newly awakened sexuality wouldn't translate into our marriage and we immediately prepared for a month long trip back to the States to see friends and family.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Thumbs Up Party
Today while driving my husband to work ELO came on the radio and my four year old son announced from the back seat that his two and a half year old sister was, "having a thumbs up party." Sure enough a glance in the rear view mirror confirmed that she was in full party mode, thrusting a thumb up on alternating hands in perfect rhythm. Not only was I impressed with her musicality but I was jealous that she could feel so much unbridled joy at 7am on a gloomy, cold Bavarian day. I had a million things on my mind and the weight of the screwed up world on my shoulders. NPR came on and summed up the VP debate. Then the generally depressing round of reporting on various world events. Then we're at the gate and I flash my ID to the guards and drive on into another world. Our Base has doubled in size in the last year and the number of single soldiers has more than doubled. At least it feels that way. Every where you look there are young men and women in their ACU's. Many of them are participating in 'exercises' and are carrying machine guns with helmets on and lower lips full of chew. My son calls out eagerly when he spots a gun and I think to myself for the umpteenth time- "How the HELL did I end up here?"
In June of 2002 I was living in NYC just managing to make ends meet and feeding off of the creative energy that abounds in that magical city. I was held up at knife point in the upscale bathing suit store I was working at and quit the next week. I was renting my own wing of an apartment in the upper west side of Manhattan from friends of a friends parents for $500 a month. Try finding that anywhere in the city. The same week I quit my job they told me their daughter and her new husband were moving back home and I'd have to find somewhere else to live. I didn't have any money saved so I had to leave the city. There's usually a silver lining and mine was that I reconnected with an old friend and casual lover and this time the chemistry was undeniable and unrelenting. He had already signed up with the Air Force and was about to leave. We consumed one another as new lovers do and then he was gone.... Over the next year I waited through basic training and then he went to tech school and we could talk and write letters again. He came home for christmas with this new wiry, muscly body and sadness in his eyes and my heart couldn't accept being without him. We decided soon after that visit to go monogamous and I went out to visit him on the Gulf Coast for valentines day. When I arrived at the small airport I didn't see him and started down the escalator to the lower level. A huge bouquet of yellow daffodils was thrust in front of my face about half way down and I felt his kiss on my neck. After some hemming and hawing and a summer spent in a tent so I could save money, I moved to his first duty station in Belleville ,Illinois. Now two things I had promised myself were that I would never work at a fast food chain or live in the mid west. And there I was. We lived in a tiny house off base and I got a job tending bar at a couple skeezy joints and he was working all kinds of crazy shifts. We made love two or three times a day most weeks, got in terrible drunken fights and started getting to know each other bit by bit. Six months into it I was pregnant. Being young and idealistic we decided to have the baby and get married. Then came the orders to Germany which we had both pushed for and when our son was 8 months old we moved across the ocean. Two months after arriving I was pregnant again and very nearly had an abortion but my husbands eagerness to have another baby rubbed off on me enough for me to change my mind.
That's the epidermis. The dermis is that I had quit my jobs once I became too sick from the pregnancy and I didn't have any friends in Illinois so my days were punctuated by the coming and going of my husband's little red car. I would loiter in front of our kitchen door window until I saw that flash of red. During the days I would invent errands for myself to get out of the house. I was for the first time since leaving home, fully dependent on someone and it didn't feel totally right. After all I certainly wasn't thinking about marriage and never really felt that stereotypical urge that women have to 'be taken care of'. I had left behind a very full and fulfilling social life and family support network and wasn't able to share my changing life and body. After the first baby was born I remember a lot of new parent bliss and the isolation became more bearable as my days were filled with the new wonders of a baby. I finally made a good friend with a baby around the same age who was as laid back as I and who could sink a glass of wine with me in between nursings. Then we moved to Germany and the next baby came which I really wasn't ready for. She was a screamer and I had a very busy toddler and most days felt exhausted and overwhelmed. I let the baby cry a lot and felt a lot of resentment towards her. Then I felt guilty because our bonding wasn't happening as effortlessly as it had with my son and I worried that she would be an unhappy person because I let her cry so much. Those were dark days. I didn't want to make love, kiss or even to be affectionate with my husband- that lasted nearly four years. I felt like a part of myself that had once been so healthy had sickened and died. The guilt was endless-knowing how much hurt and insecurity I was causing my husband sent me on a downward spiral. I never felt like I had enough for anyone let alone myself. Again I made one dear friend and this time she left me about half a year after my daughter was born.
Trying to insert myself into military life and the things that wives do has been like the old square peg in a round hole saying. The isolation got worse and the depression got worse. I had lived a prior life full of amazing friends, artists, musicians, thinkers, doers, questioning, seeking, creating and supportive people. Now my social life revolved around the occasional work function where none of the young 20 something single soldiers were interested in my mind or what I might have to say. I am a spouse and a mother and it stops at that. I felt myself slipping farther and farther away from an identity that I could be proud of. My marriage was falling apart and had been for a long time. I started to internally shoulder all the blame for this and all of my unhappiness. One night found me wailing and sobbing and a mantra escaped- " I hate myself, I hate myself.." I had one brief thought that everyone would be better off without me and that was it. I made an appointment the next day to see a doctor on base, sucked up my pride and asked to be put on an anti- depressant. I am of the opinion that Americans are over medicated and I had just read the report that the waste from Americans is full of by products from anti- depressants and is affecting the water life. But my husband was preparing to deploy for six months and I couldn't mess around- I was about to be a single parent and could not risk being that depressed. I asked to be put on Welbutrin because I had read that in some clinical studies it was shown to improve sexual disfunction which I hadn't been diagnosed with but I certainly wasn't functioning like I wanted to in that department. I started the medication and my husband shipped off. We didn't make love the night before he left and our parting was thick with sadness and relief.
In June of 2002 I was living in NYC just managing to make ends meet and feeding off of the creative energy that abounds in that magical city. I was held up at knife point in the upscale bathing suit store I was working at and quit the next week. I was renting my own wing of an apartment in the upper west side of Manhattan from friends of a friends parents for $500 a month. Try finding that anywhere in the city. The same week I quit my job they told me their daughter and her new husband were moving back home and I'd have to find somewhere else to live. I didn't have any money saved so I had to leave the city. There's usually a silver lining and mine was that I reconnected with an old friend and casual lover and this time the chemistry was undeniable and unrelenting. He had already signed up with the Air Force and was about to leave. We consumed one another as new lovers do and then he was gone.... Over the next year I waited through basic training and then he went to tech school and we could talk and write letters again. He came home for christmas with this new wiry, muscly body and sadness in his eyes and my heart couldn't accept being without him. We decided soon after that visit to go monogamous and I went out to visit him on the Gulf Coast for valentines day. When I arrived at the small airport I didn't see him and started down the escalator to the lower level. A huge bouquet of yellow daffodils was thrust in front of my face about half way down and I felt his kiss on my neck. After some hemming and hawing and a summer spent in a tent so I could save money, I moved to his first duty station in Belleville ,Illinois. Now two things I had promised myself were that I would never work at a fast food chain or live in the mid west. And there I was. We lived in a tiny house off base and I got a job tending bar at a couple skeezy joints and he was working all kinds of crazy shifts. We made love two or three times a day most weeks, got in terrible drunken fights and started getting to know each other bit by bit. Six months into it I was pregnant. Being young and idealistic we decided to have the baby and get married. Then came the orders to Germany which we had both pushed for and when our son was 8 months old we moved across the ocean. Two months after arriving I was pregnant again and very nearly had an abortion but my husbands eagerness to have another baby rubbed off on me enough for me to change my mind.
That's the epidermis. The dermis is that I had quit my jobs once I became too sick from the pregnancy and I didn't have any friends in Illinois so my days were punctuated by the coming and going of my husband's little red car. I would loiter in front of our kitchen door window until I saw that flash of red. During the days I would invent errands for myself to get out of the house. I was for the first time since leaving home, fully dependent on someone and it didn't feel totally right. After all I certainly wasn't thinking about marriage and never really felt that stereotypical urge that women have to 'be taken care of'. I had left behind a very full and fulfilling social life and family support network and wasn't able to share my changing life and body. After the first baby was born I remember a lot of new parent bliss and the isolation became more bearable as my days were filled with the new wonders of a baby. I finally made a good friend with a baby around the same age who was as laid back as I and who could sink a glass of wine with me in between nursings. Then we moved to Germany and the next baby came which I really wasn't ready for. She was a screamer and I had a very busy toddler and most days felt exhausted and overwhelmed. I let the baby cry a lot and felt a lot of resentment towards her. Then I felt guilty because our bonding wasn't happening as effortlessly as it had with my son and I worried that she would be an unhappy person because I let her cry so much. Those were dark days. I didn't want to make love, kiss or even to be affectionate with my husband- that lasted nearly four years. I felt like a part of myself that had once been so healthy had sickened and died. The guilt was endless-knowing how much hurt and insecurity I was causing my husband sent me on a downward spiral. I never felt like I had enough for anyone let alone myself. Again I made one dear friend and this time she left me about half a year after my daughter was born.
Trying to insert myself into military life and the things that wives do has been like the old square peg in a round hole saying. The isolation got worse and the depression got worse. I had lived a prior life full of amazing friends, artists, musicians, thinkers, doers, questioning, seeking, creating and supportive people. Now my social life revolved around the occasional work function where none of the young 20 something single soldiers were interested in my mind or what I might have to say. I am a spouse and a mother and it stops at that. I felt myself slipping farther and farther away from an identity that I could be proud of. My marriage was falling apart and had been for a long time. I started to internally shoulder all the blame for this and all of my unhappiness. One night found me wailing and sobbing and a mantra escaped- " I hate myself, I hate myself.." I had one brief thought that everyone would be better off without me and that was it. I made an appointment the next day to see a doctor on base, sucked up my pride and asked to be put on an anti- depressant. I am of the opinion that Americans are over medicated and I had just read the report that the waste from Americans is full of by products from anti- depressants and is affecting the water life. But my husband was preparing to deploy for six months and I couldn't mess around- I was about to be a single parent and could not risk being that depressed. I asked to be put on Welbutrin because I had read that in some clinical studies it was shown to improve sexual disfunction which I hadn't been diagnosed with but I certainly wasn't functioning like I wanted to in that department. I started the medication and my husband shipped off. We didn't make love the night before he left and our parting was thick with sadness and relief.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Writer's Block
This is a letter I wrote to Maya Angelou on a recent bus ride to NYC. This was during the first extended period of alone time I'd had in four years. It really sums up some of the things I have been wrestling over in my mind.
Dear Maya,
I have been finding much solace, inspiration and a feeling of kinship in reading biographies lately. Namely the fourth volume of your own and the first of seven books that comprise the diaries of Anais Nin. I am a thirty-one year old stay at home mother to a four year old and a two year old. Lately my life has centered around two strong words, yearning and struggle. I am yearning for myself and struggling to find the way there, yearning for freedom and struggling with the word 'Selfish', struggling with balancing my familial obligations with the obligations to my own heart and autonimous life. Before I continue however, let me make it clear that I have a lot of love and wisdom in my life from a pretty amazing collection of friends and family so this is no pity party. I am just reading of the time in your life when you joined the Harlem Writers Guild and you have just promised to read your first short story in two months. I am a writer, and not because I have published anything or even tried to, hell I have never even finished a body of work but I know I am a writer like I know how to breath. I was born with it. I have a gift but pulling it out of my head and imparting it to paper is like trying to move a boulder. I have felt as of late, that I am almost ready to jump in, to make the commitment but for some reason I am so scared to commit as you were then. I'm scared that if I jump in and abandon myself to the creative process, that I will lose my marraige. I have a rich inner imaginitive life but I am not fully satisfied to live vicariously and I write at my best when I am surrounded by creativity and genius and have my finger on the pulsepoint of life, when I am heartbroken, or caught up in the exhileration of first kisses. My life with my husband won't include much of the above and it's something that I feel I will have to seek out on my own if I am to go as far as I think I can with my writing. How fully do you give yourself over to writing and did you find that you had to arrange your writing around your life or did it become such a part of you that your life and family had to arrange themselves around your writing? And why do you think it's so damn scary to go for something that is already inherent? How do you validate the decision to nurture something in yourself that may never make you famous or recognized, that may cost you an intact family? How do you trust that maybe instead of taking those nursing classes so you can bring in a steady, reliable income, you should be writing, should be surrounded by other writers. And the average person's response would probably be that you take the nursing classes and find yourself a local writers circle.... But that doesn't satissfy me because I worry that if they are not gifted writers themselves that their criticism won't be gifted. That I won't learn and grow as a writer without the proper guidance and inspiration. And what about the pulse point? I'm not exactly sure what it is that I need to hear from you or that you'll feel moved to write me back, just that I felt moved to write you suddenly on this bouncy bus ride to New York in between chapter 2 and 3. I guess anything will do, any ruminations or a word of encouragement.
Dear Maya,
I have been finding much solace, inspiration and a feeling of kinship in reading biographies lately. Namely the fourth volume of your own and the first of seven books that comprise the diaries of Anais Nin. I am a thirty-one year old stay at home mother to a four year old and a two year old. Lately my life has centered around two strong words, yearning and struggle. I am yearning for myself and struggling to find the way there, yearning for freedom and struggling with the word 'Selfish', struggling with balancing my familial obligations with the obligations to my own heart and autonimous life. Before I continue however, let me make it clear that I have a lot of love and wisdom in my life from a pretty amazing collection of friends and family so this is no pity party. I am just reading of the time in your life when you joined the Harlem Writers Guild and you have just promised to read your first short story in two months. I am a writer, and not because I have published anything or even tried to, hell I have never even finished a body of work but I know I am a writer like I know how to breath. I was born with it. I have a gift but pulling it out of my head and imparting it to paper is like trying to move a boulder. I have felt as of late, that I am almost ready to jump in, to make the commitment but for some reason I am so scared to commit as you were then. I'm scared that if I jump in and abandon myself to the creative process, that I will lose my marraige. I have a rich inner imaginitive life but I am not fully satisfied to live vicariously and I write at my best when I am surrounded by creativity and genius and have my finger on the pulsepoint of life, when I am heartbroken, or caught up in the exhileration of first kisses. My life with my husband won't include much of the above and it's something that I feel I will have to seek out on my own if I am to go as far as I think I can with my writing. How fully do you give yourself over to writing and did you find that you had to arrange your writing around your life or did it become such a part of you that your life and family had to arrange themselves around your writing? And why do you think it's so damn scary to go for something that is already inherent? How do you validate the decision to nurture something in yourself that may never make you famous or recognized, that may cost you an intact family? How do you trust that maybe instead of taking those nursing classes so you can bring in a steady, reliable income, you should be writing, should be surrounded by other writers. And the average person's response would probably be that you take the nursing classes and find yourself a local writers circle.... But that doesn't satissfy me because I worry that if they are not gifted writers themselves that their criticism won't be gifted. That I won't learn and grow as a writer without the proper guidance and inspiration. And what about the pulse point? I'm not exactly sure what it is that I need to hear from you or that you'll feel moved to write me back, just that I felt moved to write you suddenly on this bouncy bus ride to New York in between chapter 2 and 3. I guess anything will do, any ruminations or a word of encouragement.
Pacing the Perimeters
Being a stay at home mother has been the biggest challenge I've faced yet. Motherhood alone is by far the hardest job I've ever undertaken but the rewards are immeasurable and well worth the sacrifices. The stay at home part however doesn't hold many rewards for me and I find it confining and frustrating. Women friends of mine have told me to just wait it out- it's hard at first but you get into a groove and they were eventually able to find great satisfaction in it. I am done waiting for that day and am coming to peace with the fact that I love baking my own bread and filling the house with the smells of a home made soup but I detest cleaning and being judged by how orderly my home is or how stained my kids clothes are. When I close my eyes at night I see myself riding my motorcycle down endless New England back roads not mopping the floor that will look disgusting again in half an hour. I'm sure there are countless blogs out there about stay at home motherhood and the sacrifices and sorrows we all are so intimate with but this little blog is intended mainly for me to work through what comes after the recognition that things aren't working, when you find yourself at a crossroads and all directions hold painful consequences. This is about my search for self reclamation and finding the balance between Selfish and Selfless. I am a mother lioness pacing the perimeters of her life.
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