It took me over ten minutes, I think, to come up with my name. What signifies me, yet isn’t obvious? What sounds like me? Why am I not more creative? At any rate, I think I like what I came up with. An astrologer I respect once told me this lifetime was my last time around: hence the name. This life has been hard, so I’m kind of hoping he’s right about that.
So I’m writing a blog because I need to spend more time in my head, if you can believe that. this seems like an interesting way to do that, since eventually people may happen upon my blog and comment on it, so it will be public and personal at the same time. I’m afraid to spend time alone, in my head, so I over-fill my days and feel incredibly sorry for myself when I don’t have stuff to keep me busy – a friend of mine says that being alone is being in enemy territory, and I’m very sad to say I think that’s true for me. I should probably be meditating, but at the very least I’ll try getting back into journal writing in this electronic format. I think the trick will be to stay true to myself, to not write as though there is a potential audience, to speak the same secret truths that I would if I were writing in one of my spiral-bound, Pearl-Paint journals. I think I’m going to try to do this a la The Artist’s Way, writing for half an hour every day, ideally every morning.
So where am I in my life? I’m 37, female, somewhat recently single (< 1 year), I’ve been attending a twelve-step group for equally as long, and I’m trying to learn how to truly love and accept myself, without limits or exceptions. My father is dead and I think I probably still don’t know what that means to me, except that I am avoiding a best friend whose brother just died because I still can’t really deal with cancer and death (why I’m avoiding her, not why he died). She deserves better than that and I’m not even sure she knows I’m avoiding her, but I know. And saying it here makes it real.
Really, how long can these things remain completely anonymous? If anyone who knew me read this, they’d know it was me already. But I live for connection with people. Literally – it’s what I care about more than anything in the world, is feeling connected to people. So maybe this needs to be a calculated risk – I want to be myself and connect with others as myself, which puts me at risk for people finding out more than I’d ordinarily tell.
So my dad is dead and my mom is a handful and a half, larger than life, but not the reason I’m a lesbian. She is not affectionate and makes me look like a colossal slacker by comparison – she really manages to fit 37 hours worth of activities into a 24-hour day. She’s also in a miserable relationship and without a doubt has a vortex of self-hate at her core that is what keeps her running so fast, fearing she’ll get sucked in if she slows down at all. I don’t want to be like her, and I don’t want to be in a relationship like hers with either my dad or her new partner, nor do I want a relationship that’s anything like my sister’s, which just mirrors the contempt and disrespectmy mother had for my father. who we are affects who we choose, so how I can I possibly choose well until I’m happy with me? I’m infinitely more okay being single now than I was four or five months ago, and I think it will just get easier as time passes, but I think the one thing I truly doubt I’m capable of is a loving, supportive relationship. Elizabeth Gilbert says that every day we should ask ourselves the question “what do I really, really, really want?” (apparently the 3 reallys are essential) and write down our answers. I realize I’m not ready for it yet, but I really, really, really want a healthy, supportive intimate relationship. I think the two things I want most in this world are to keep discovering my passion and pursuing it, and to be in a loving relationship. But I must say, my program (which needs to remain anonymous, even here) is helping me grow and change so much that I have to acknowledge I don’t know what that is going to look like six months or a year from now. It may well be that the fantasy I now have is really something I need to be for myself, and that once I feel more whole, my image of whom I want to be with will shift, as well.
Okay, I think this is enough for tonight. But this seems like a good thing – something I’ll look forward to. Good night.
Glad you are here…keep writing…