It’s been a long while living like infant pines huddled in the snow. Words that won’t come to me, always my mind left to slumber alone. And I am in that twighlight place, that purgatory. I am not living and I am not dead. The revelry and misery of life ricochet off me and I am immune to feeling. I reflect fondly on the girl who pledged to live deliberately enough to make Thoreau blush. But, now she has become me.
I’m not sure who is right, me or her? I know the path that brought me here would be treacherous to most. I thrive on treacherous journeys. They, gratefully so, remind me I'm alive. Each adventure has its consequences. This last one was bumpy enough to leave me numb for a while, and concussed. I can’t honestly say when this adventure started? 1998? 2000? 2004? 2006? 2007? Each of those a dark ring in my flesh marking some significant event.
For the last three months I haven’t had an address. Living, albeit unofficially. My entire life in storage, waiting to be unpacked, rediscovered. It may take an anthropologist to put it all back together and let me know who the hell I am again. And ya know I may reject the findings, and scream “put it all back in boxes.”
The idea of the big house with the white picket fence has always left me claustrophobic, like the idea of being buried alive. Funny I have two kids and a dog. In typical idealistic fashion I thought 10 weeks of 4 people living in one hotel room would be nothing more than an adventure. The potpourri of shit, dust, and dirty sheets changed my mind after about 6 weeks. I was surprised when the laughter of my children became torturous. Some days I hoped that my husband would stay late, just so I wouldn’t have to cooperate with yet another human. One less person’s breath to breathe. Many days I hoped I’d awake to find I had evaporated somewhere between the fake seams of the paneling.
Now we have our house, and I still feel like I’m putting out a stranger’s belongings. Relics of someone else’s life. An Amnesia patient. There is one thing that is familiar. I still love things raw. Don’t insult me by feeding me some pre-packaged bullshit. Just hand me everything still palpitating, and let me figure it out myself.
Only when I am running on the hilly dirt roads by my house can I both escape and find myself. I am at home running through the trees, feet in direct contact with the earth (excepting my soles) like all other primal beasts. This is the only thing of late that is familiar to me. Give me the unexplored, the unpaved, the raw… Keep the pavement, the neatly cut trails, those safe paths for yourself. I am not comfortable there.
I’m not sure what has left me numb. I’m not sure I care just as long as I still have my moments of liberation. Maybe it’s more that I don’t quite belong in this life of mine. I am an awkward leading woman in the play I’ve written for myself. Whether I like it or not, my role requires a bit of the white picket fence life. Honestly, as much as I resist it, some part of me seeks it. While I’d be happy in a trailer in the woods, the mother in me, the little girl that went without, wants to provide for my sons. The yard stick; do they have what their friends have? Me, endlessly repulsed by the confinement, of a typical life is fished into the lukewarm water by this question. Aren’t we all?
We are all on a quest to define ourselves with our belongings. To reflect our inner selves outward with the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the house we live in. We wear them like trophies, or shameful reminders of our failures. It’s all just stuff. This journey to acquire things that define us, or show status keeps us from really knowing ourselves. It over powers us, makes us unrightly proud, or unjustly steals us of our dignity. Yet, it can all be stolen away in a second. Make believe happy. Manufactured bliss. The only things we own, are our memories, our productions, our thoughts. Only the intangibles belong to us, the rest is BULLSHIT that distracts us from what makes us happy. I am definitely not immune… and I think I know now what was making numb. I was almost reformed.
This crazy adventure has come to a close at the foot of our 10 year anniversary. I can't help but remember the day that I "KNEW" what I wanted for my life. Casey and I stopped at the bait shop, he picked up a 40oz bud for himself and a 22oz bud lite for me, some worms. We went to Hawthorne park (a swampy lake). I sat barefoot on the bridge next to him. We sat, talked and threw worms into the water. I thought to myself, I can handle this. This can be my life. It's the pursuit of "stuff" that complicates our lives. I didn't NEED much then and I don't NEED much now. There is a fine difference between the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of possessions. They are not to be confused without dire consequences. Do not become possessed by the misconception that to have not is to be not. I think those dirt roads have led me back to myself finally!
Last night I asked Casey if he remembered that day. "How could I forget?"
