I am not sure. That is all I know. I am no longer an attorney, that ship has been slipping for years. The education attained, the vocation spent. And now I founder through the morass of what is next?
I am losing my motherhood, my children need something more from me, freedom. And I am want to give it. I see them growing and I so enjoy them but I see that with my son, he and I cannot live beneath one roof. Too damaging to all concerned. And my daughter, I fear for her. I feel her slipping from me every day. A little further away and out of my reach and I know this is as it should be but I falter to find common ground. I push toward and she recedes. I pull back and she cries. I find myself with less and less to say that means anything to either one of us.
I feel desperate and alone. I feel sad and happy, content with all the discontentedness. Too many thoughts conjuring in my mind to even begin to explain them to anyone who cared enough to listen. I am here, but leaving, I can feel it.
Each moment passing unto another, each day dawning and I feel like I am missing it in all my living, missing the life that I intended to live. While longing for the life that I didn’t live. The family life, the vacations abroad, the lake time, the bbq the friends and loved ones drawn near. But this is not my lot. My tiny family fragmented and really more a gathering of loners, people who love each other deeply but really require more solitude than a familial life will allow.
It feels a bit unfair to have the need for so much aloneness and still be possessed with such desire for connection. Why can’t I just be content with the solitude? I am trying, I swear I am. I see the looming ocean of alone that is coming for me soon, and I welcome it really. Content with that being next in the order of things. But trying to sort through whether my desire for the love of a man is just me trying to avoid myself or whether it is really born of a true desire to love and be loved in return. I really can’t say anymore, not that I ever really could.
I float above the frays of life, content to have this row of seats to myself. Away from the poor soul whose health so precarious that my mere presence caused him alarm. I wish that I was the person who was not annoyed at all his needs, but today I just wanted to get away, from him, his neediness, his controlling nature. I know nothing of his struggle, except that today I couldn’t bear it. I could not deal with him and his pouring over of girth into my space. Thankfully there was row absent of passengers, and I took the liberty to reseat myself. Worried not at all about the shift of my slight frame in the balancing of a giant aircraft. I let those better suited for such tasks be concerned with all of that. That is what they get paid for, me, I am just another problem to be solved. A passenger taking up space, my own space, however briefly, in flight from the man that took up too much for himself.
No one seems happy on this flight. No one. Not the crew, most especially the flight attendant standing guard by the cockpit while the co-pilot uses the john. He seems overly burdened by a task other than serving drinks and snacks. He seems unhappy too as he gathers the trash that he gave us just moments ago when it was snacks, not trash.
I drift back in time to a day when no flight attendant ever had to stand guard over the head closest to the cockpit. A time when things were different, when people did not commandeer planes into buildings killing everything in sight.
A time when gunfire was not unleashed on a parade in Chicago. Killing and wounding and scarring for life so many people. Me, I was not there. But I am scarred just the same.
I feel my sanity unraveling in this world on instant everything and feel myself pulled more and more out into the great wide open of a life that I wish to live. As the years advance so to does my need to retreat, from you, from flying bullets that bring death. I do not want this life, not like that. I do not want to live with the fear over what is becoming of me, of my children. Every moment on the planet feeling more and more like I need to retreat further into myself just to survive.
I chew some gum and that seems to quell the rising panic in my throat. The flight attendant keeps his post. Him willingly placing himself as the first to go. I long for a world where humans did not spend so much time thinking of ways to hurt each other. Of times where humanity seemed more humane. I know that time doesn’t really exist. Bullets have always flown. Guns have always shot. People have always raped, and plundered and killed. I just wish that it wasn’t so.
I feel that I would know who I was better in that other world that doesn’t really exist. I feel that there is too much struggle, and we all need less. Less of everything, and the irony of the statement by me as I just bought a new pair of earrings during my layover betrays any kind of superiority I think I could claim. I am not better. I am just the same.
The flight attendant stands down from his post. The man with the issues requires assistance now and it appears to be an all hands situation. I envy the man his commitment to his issues. I think he doesn’t likely spend a great deal of time thinking about guns and violence and who he is. He seems very content to offer up Starbuck gift cards to flight attendants that listen and help and fret over him. He thinks that they won’t do it without a formal thank you gift. But they will.
And I can relate, this is how I have lived my life, feeling terrible for needing anything, inconveniencing you in anyway. Asking for help and them immediately reneging it. Full of frustration for my foray into need and want. Always feeling like I need to pay you for your time. Starbucks gift cards for all of mankind, just in case I need something later on.
I guess that answers my question “Who am I Anymore?” I am the same person I have always been, somewhat evolved, somewhat lazy in the drive to move into whatever comes next. I am tired of the violence, yet I commit it to. Not with guns or fists of rage but with words that echo within my mind. Things I think and say about you to myself, that leave me feeling hollowed out and alone. I cannot love you really, because you fail and fuck up and annoy me. And create a strong desire for me to flee your company. And yet, at the very same time I need you. I need you to care, to notice I am gone, to miss me when I am away. I am a great catastrophe of living, life held captive inside a body and mind that wants endless amounts of things, security and grace.
But that is what all humans are. Fallible, fucked up, kindly unkind and needy little fuckers who want and cry when they do not get all that they think life promised them.
I drone on and on and even I am not listening anymore. I just keep throwing words on the page, thinking that somehow I will find myself in them. And I do. And I don’t.
But like with all life, the knowing comes from within the struggle, the desire to live comes from the contemplation of not living. The desire to be more, a luxury of someone who thinks they have more time.
I come home to myself again. Landing in a life that is charmed by any account. Grateful to be returning to my child who feels lost. My pets that miss me when I go out to get the mail. My bed that welcomes my rest and readies me for a new day. I come home to myself, but I must muck about a bit. I must push forward and carry forth in this endless ask of myself about myself. I don’t seem to be able to let it go, this struggle to understand why I do what I do and why that makes me feel the way I feel. How can someone be so much in their own way, as to block the forward progress of life, while clearly living the best life I can think of at the same time.?
I do not know...time is a wanton bitch, making me feel reluctant for the time I have left, while also being human and wishing for more. Being absolutely certain about less and less in this life. The more I live, the more questions I have about life, love, me. I find that I do not know me anymore, and yet, at the very same time, I know myself better than I ever have before. Life is this temporary thing that feels permanent far more often than it should.
I really haven't a clue who or even what I am anymore, except I know this: I hug and kiss trees in deep ancient woods, and I like that about me even if it is slightly crazy. I feel at home amongst the trees, more me, less what I think I should be. There is no need for me to project anything other than who I am to a tree. The tree remains unchanged by my presence or my absence, it endures and goes right on living its life...no worse or better for the wear of my passing acquaintance. I am whoever I am in the moment, and the tree is just fine with that. Have I ever told you just how much I learn from walking in a distant wood? Sometimes, if I am really lucky, I even come to know who I am anymore.
