I would love to just go away, now. Go somewhere - maybe mountains with a creekside. A cabin. No one nearby, just me. Trees. Birds. Sunshine. Ferns, moss, wildflowers. Some boulders. 76 degrees and low humidity. Rain after midnight and a thunderstorm or two late afternoons, somedays. A view of miles, valleys, other mountain tops; clouds. Must be I am in a Camelot mood - without all the pomp and intrigue!
I am feeling tired of being me right now. I want to shed my skin and be a tabula rosa. Right now I am a farrago of beings, all too many, and none functioning very well. I am weary of being a mother, and one who is manque, at best right now. I want too much and I give too much and I expect too much. The rewards, rewards? are few and inconsistent. So, abandon children!
I am weary of being 58. Let's try 35 again, but a different 35 then the one I already lived.
And working. Maybe I should learn the mandolin; turn my violin into a fiddle and work my way across the land playing for food to eat, playing for fun and delight.
Where did the herbalist go? My herb farm, apocathary, recipes, soothing blends?
Can I erase yesterday? Can I be just me, a neophyte, an acolyte to my reincarnation?
No birth family with all the abuse, terror, pain. Sex at age seven. Beatings, beratings, endless supplications without a cessation of the life I was in. No family - demanding and selfish to the end. Hating me, jealous of me, wanting me to fix things, do the right things, be better than, more than, take care of, care of, care of...and the hatred festering away even unto death. And still, wanting me to take care of what is left.
No pregnancy at 20. No rushing to find any way to escape the nightmares of family going right to the edge of a cliff. Not being able to jump off - to say NO! I cannot do this. I do not know anything. Not a baby - not yet. Such fear, a husband and a baby. Marriage, what did that mean? Was I safe? Was I loved? Who was that girl who had such high expectations of love, of being cherished, the princess life?
Babies, poverty, coming in second, third, moving where my husband went, no choice, dead ends everywhere I looked. Wisconsin, Ohio, New York, alien landscapes littered with landmines. Marriage, never immutable except in its ability to stun, to turn me upside down. There I sat, wanting, wanting, never enough, never good enough, never smart enough, never pretty, let alone pretty enough. Homebound. And after a while, no longer a wife. An "ex." Ex what? Can skin be shed with such rapidity?
And then only part of a mother. What was left after I became an "ex." What was a mother anyway? Not valued, for one thing. Alone, for another. The isolation of it all was galactic. My mantra, don't be like your mother and everything will be OK. I would say that in my sleep; I will say that in my grave.
And here, at 58, the mantra fails me.
