|
4.21.05
I am about 15 years past those early adult years of daily self-scrutiny, discovery and introspection. Thank God. ("Thank God" quite literally, not used here as an oath.) Frankly, it's a big burden lifted. I guess it's necessary to spend time figuring out who you are and who you ain't. For a time. And then move on. Get going. Go. Go, go, go.
If there is one single thing that surprises me most about who I've become as a grownup, it's that I'm practical. Almost militantly so. It cracks me up. But I've seen shipwrecks of people who did not know when to quit dreaming and start going.
I was the daydreaming child with the fanciful imagination, with butterflies flying around inside my head whenever I was in math or science class. I have a B.A. in Creative Writing and my thesis was poetry. I am still a poet, and that is the word embossed in little letters all over my heart, which I think would stop beating if I couldn't make stuff and be creative. And still, I am grown up, and I have turned into a very practical woman. How does something like that happen?
And who cares? :)
When I started this online journal (before the word "blog" was ubiquitous and blog software was readily available), I didn't intend it as a place to plop my heart willy-nilly. I started it so that I would be disciplined to write on a regular basis, even if it was about nothing, and to nobody. The quotes at the top give me inspiration and focus, kind of a loose guideline. Journaling under a quote is something I've done since highschool, when Marciia Muldoon wrote a quote on the blackboard every day and said "journal about this."
I think part of this adult conversion to practicality is related to my busyness. A good level of busyness . . . the kind that registers you're alive. I have a house to run, a toddler to tend to, pets, people, stuff at church, a husband with all the help husbands need (how can dear husband not yet know which appliance is washer and which is dryer in stackable unit we have had for two months?!?!?!?) . . . busy and without time to soak in the warm bubblebath of self contemplation. The warm bubblebath that SHRIVELS UP YOUR SKIN if you stay in it too long.
So I weave the poetry and musings in around the "I'm tired" and "stop worrying, she'll be okay," and "I thought I bought yogurt; I swear I bought yogurt; did I just walk past the yogurt; where is the yogurt?" mom thoughts.
Now my dad is sick, and at night when I lay down to sleep, all the buried angst in my brain floats up to the top because I'm tired and the deeper layers know this and break loose and take advantage of my sleepiness. Some kind of subconscious coup.
But still, even in these late-night thinkings, my thoughts no longer run to "who am I?" They're more along the lines of "who are WE?" I am depressed, worried about my dad, and the depression that felt like insecurity in my early 20s feels now like grief. And that's what it is. Grief for the human condition, for everybody, everywhere, ever. Not just me, about me, my feelings, my reactions. The depression no longer unseats me, and I am undaunted by it, but it reminds me that I'm so grateful to be older, and to have seen enough cycles of my own life to know when to quit thinking and just go. Go, go, go.
|
