Feeling a little...

 

Some days are like that.  So up and down, roller-coasteresque that you spend the whole day just trying to figure out if you are headed into or headed out of danger.    Not the kind of danger where your life depends on the next decision, but more the kind that eats away at your sanity.  The kind that feels like being nibbled to death by ducks.    And on those days I tend to ponder “Is this what I signed on for?  Is this what I wanted?”  It’s really easy to forget why I started down this path in the first place.

 I just read a book in which a character asks “I must know; As a child is this the woman you dreamed of becoming?”  In short.  No.  Lately I’m kind of tired of being me.  

What no one ever explained is how the children, husband, marriage, job, career you wanted with every fiber of your whole being is also the same thing on any other given day that feels like the exactly one thing holding you back from your true pursuit of happiness.  

The first time I felt this way I was scared out of my mind.  I had a brand new baby and I realized that, try as I might, I was not going to shower alone for a very, very long time and certainly not on any daily, or even planned and reliable basis.   And you know, I felt like the world’s worst human being for about ten crap minutes, and then called someone I trusted and after they stopped laughing at me, and I stopped crying, they explained the sheer truth of it all.  “Mama, you are going to hate them sometimes.  And in the next minute love them just as much.  You’re just scared.”  

This has been such a life-saving piece of advice and at the time, I didn’t realize both home important, and how hard to share, that little nugget is.  It’s takes serious courage to tell someone you don’t always want what you have but have chosen to ride the ride through all of its stops.  It takes courage to admit that sometimes you don’t feel all unicorns and roses about your spouse.  That your children have not been making you shoot out shiny rainbows and stars lately.  That your job, your responsibilities, your health care regime, or your ugly-ass shoes are making your soul cry little tears of purple poison.

Today, as I drove in the rain, I had a film run through my head.  I remember driving these same roads in my early twenties, planning the renovation on the gorgeous farm-house I wanted to buy and envisioning the ducks that would bob gracefully on my future pond.  I envisioned wine-laden dinner parties on the patio facing the orchard.  My guest list included people I could not imagine my life without.  All things were possible because I was young and idealistic.  Down to a detail, the whole scene came about differently.  My life does not include this gorgeous house, nary a duck to be seen, and the orchard has kindly requested I stop bringing wine when I pick apples in the fall, so, well… there you go.

The planned guests at my party have all moved on in new and different directions.  Some to other locations, some to other jobs, some to a different spouse, some to other spiritual planes.  I miss them.  I miss who I was with them.  And with sadness, today, I realized that I miss dreaming.

 Is it just my age?  Is it another unspoken reality that at some point you stop dreaming? Or that you realize that these things are likely only dreams of what could be on any other day under different circumstances?   I need the updated version of the rule book that explains these things, for otherwise I think it is only me that feels this way.  And I worry that I missed the secret formula that makes things come ‘round right.

So today, I put this out into the universe because I’m a little betwixt and between.  I need a good cup of coffee, a good cry, some decent meditation, and some good advice to start me on the next steep learning curve.  I’m not asking for validation of the life I’m living, because on any other day I know that this is not too shabby, and everything is only temporary.  I just need to know that somewhere out there you are going through this too, or have been through this, or are afraid this is the territory you are headed into as well.   I’m looking for that kindred “I’ve been there sister, and it’s ugly, but here’s how you get through it…”

So please, bring your bottle of wine to my imaginary farm table and let’s sit under my imaginary stars and watch imaginary fireflies.  Lay your wisdom on me.  And I will thank you with real, and deep gratitude.