2012: A Resolution
It’s quiet here.
The weather is forecasting another foot of snow in an already overwhelming winter.
As the mounds of snow encroach on the roads, 2 lanes turn into one.
I feel that this is not unlike my life.
I’ve decided to be quiet.
It’s time to be still.
I can hardly believe this is Nino’s last year before he leaves for college. With graduation 11 short months away, I find myself feverishly eliminating excess from my life.
Despite my drive and “always” ambition, something is calling to me.
I’ve chose to listen.
I’m changing, and I can feel it.
As a woman does when she feels the call to motherhood, I feel myself shutting down. Shedding layers, and frankly … it makes me sad.
The muse has escaped me. My inspiration is fading. Determination is dissipating.
The need to save the world with blind benevolence is replaced with ambivalence.
I qualm more in my own mind over financial issues than I do with pondering the fate of the world. I am shedding the girl who once shamelessly shouted “REVOLUTION!” into a political convention. I feel like something brittle trying to bend and …
I hear who I think I am … cracking.
I’m snapping beneath the fated weight of constantly trying to BE the change I want to see in the world; I am losing the girl. This old woman is all that is left.
I’ve departed from myself.
I feel less.
. . .
I was standing in my kitchen reading letters from my father. In them he forecast Nino helping him walk when he becomes an old man. I feverishly put them away, not wanting to feel.
I implore “happy” music, and begin an art form I haven’t lost love for; cooking.
‘Over the Rainbow’ by Iz comes on and I find myself racing to turn it off.
My bend breaks, and I race to the bathroom to put my hands over my face and weep.
Yet I don’t pray for peace, or even that the sorrow subsides. Rather, I cry … and try to fully experience this pain … hoping that it makes me feel human again.
. . .
As I withdraw from the world, and minimize its access to me, I am hoping my self inflicted solitude will accomplish a few things.
In the coming year –
I hope to redeem myself to son.
For the times I gave myself to the world when I should have given myself to him, I will be available and ready.
I will strip away the pageantry and posing that I’ve been imposing upon myself for so many years.
I am willfully letting broadcast go.
I have been held captive by the fear that I am not enough without it. I have doubted and demeaned myself in the name of something I am good at for the sake of saving my ego.
Where do we go wrong? We build our own likeness in the form of our highest selves, in the hopes that our insecurity fades when we begin believe in the way we are SEEN.
Hoping other people’s belief in the dream … makes it real.
We become slaves to our reflection.
I am burning this perception, and starting over.
I plan to sit in my silence and listen closer.
Will I still write, create? Will I still paint?
Will I begin to care again?
Who am I without these things?
And moreover … is that still who I want to be?
I have been screaming so long that it’s hard to hear that voice.
Good thing it’s quiet here.
Happy New Year.
