In the past 5 months I’ve moved, come to terms with my definition of motherhood (in understanding the empty nest syndrome), reconnected with an old friend that was once the love of my life only to lose him again, lost a dear friend, gained many new friends who don’t really know the depth of my insanity, and experienced the fear of losing a child (thanks be that he’s okay).  I have doubted myself on all levels, dealt with extreme loneliness, decided to move to a new place half a dozen times, and were it not for my fear of death, bordered on wanting to check out a few times.  I’ve had too much time to think, and my mind never stops spinning from one vortex into another.  I laughed my way through the imminent Rapture, only to wonder,what if?  I’ve questioned my abandonment of an ingrained belief system that never really gave me comfort.  I wondered why, as capable and wiling as I am to love, there is no one to receive it.  I’ve given up a bad habit,(smoking), only to have it rob me of the comfortable skin I lived in.  I loathe my reflection, but my lungs are happy.  My blood pressure issue is resolved and I don’t live in the brink of a stroke every day.  I’ve been able to walk away from my 40 hour a week yoke and dedicate all of my time not working on my Grad degree to writing.  Though I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing, I’ve worked my way through menopause without hormone replacement therapy, and psychotic mood swings.

So, in light of all of these changes and life alterations, there should be at least 4 or 5 new books on my shelf.  Alas, that is not so. I’m crawling through the days, waiting for the nights, writhing in nightmarish dreams that give me relief from the banal circumstances I find myself in, and each morning I wake up wondering if I’ve broken out of the placental sack of my self imposed imprisonment.  Each morning I gaze at the empty space on the other side of my bed and wonder if I will find my creative self  in dead repose, mocking me.

Now, just a few days past the life altering shift that took place 9 months ago (my hospitalization for high blood pressure), I seem to have found some answers to questions that have been causing the turbulence in my brain.  With all of these life experiences and no words on paper to stuff into little boxes, I wear them like a post apocalyptic pelt that keeps me bound to doubt.  Nine months, the gestation of a human life…nine months, when the body changes to accommodate that life…nine months,  the time it takes to push that new life into the world…nine months, and this was the morning I woke up and found my creative self lying in repose next to me with open arms…

Stay tuned…

With twelve years between us, there wasn’t much chance of a deep bonding between siblings.  I was more like an ersatz mom.  Life changed dramatically as we moved to Livorno, Italy, not long after he was born.  I’d already spent the first twelve impressionable years of my life with no real connection to family outside of my parents.  I clung to the minimally normal family life I had.  My parents barely spoke, my mom cooked, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned,  (yeah to excess), worked a full day, ran errands, and basically fulfilled the 1950′s version of the female persona.   She barely had time for my brother, so I was given the responsibility of entertaining him.  I can admit now, all these years later, I had such deep animosity toward that little boy, that at times I hated him.  Little did I know, we were both victims of a set of parents too busy with everything but nurturing us, and a father that didn’t hesitate to kick my ass to prove a point.  I was held responsible for anything my brother did “wrong.”  I had no social life, or chance to get involved in after shcool activities, and hanging with my friends was limited to the weekends when my mom didn’ t have to work.  More animosity built up.  It is one my life’s deepest regrets, not having him as part of my life, because we share the same blood, the same DNA, we are bound by things much deeper and stronger than a selfish bastard that walked out of both of our lives between the legs of another woman.  He caused irreperable destruction to me, my brother, and my mother.  And yet, I call him my father…

Of course all of these years later, though I don’t know my brother at all, he lives in Germany, I realize we were both victims of some bizarre need for my father to have a son.  Though I spent the better part of my childhood being injected with how to be a male, I just didn’t have the equipment to carry on the name.  That was very important to my father.  Irony…he and brother have no relationship and though my brother has a son, my father doesn’t know him either.  Karma can be a bitch. 

The reason for this trip back through memory lane, is because it was the beginning of determining who I became until about three weeks ago.  The mother, the nurturer, the protector, the womb to propagate life, the caretaker, and above all else, the denier of anything outside of that.  Without the daily struggle to provide for my children, I became an empty shell with no idea of what to do to feel like there was any value to my being.  I entered a void, a vortex that has spun out of control and is eating me alive and worrying me to death.  Who am I now?  What is my purpose?  Is there a value to me outside of being a mother?  Will I spend the rest of my life alone?  It’s hell.  It’s fucking hell and yet as has been the case since the age of seven, I still cannot shed a single tear.  The one thing that definitely stuck with me from the bowels of my fathers controlling mouth is, “Don’t cry, it’s a sign of weakness.  Once you start, you can’t stop and it will destroy you.”

The identity I spoke of earlier, the mother, is the one that now eludes me on the level it has been since the age of twelve, and has me standing outside of myself for the first time in this life, looking in and wondering, why does it feel like this is the end?  If you have the guts, step on the train and ride through this journey with me.  I’m going to prove that “EMPTY NEST SYNDROME” is very, very real, and devastating to the psyche that society has created for women.

P.S. I love you Junior…

Stay Tuned…

I suppose that’s why I’ve been on a hell ride almost my entire life.  I’ve made it a mission to function outside of the rule pool.  My earliest memory of being subliminally infused with a personality trait was my father telling me I was born the wrong gender and should have been a boy, because I didn’t “act” like a girl.  I suppose I wasn’t too sure what the difference was.  He said I was too strong to be a woman and for that reason I would likely not be able to “hang onto a man” because of that.  He assured me that strong women are destined to be alone, because men don’t tolerate that trait well.   He made sure to beat the idea into me for the better part of my childhood.  I’ve wondered through the years if he was trying to beat the strong out of me.  I also wonder if that’s why I leaned toward marrying a man that didn’t hesitate to kick my ass to make that same point.  Two marriages and two divorces later, I’m stronger than ever, and yes I’m alone.  I see it as a bit of a conundrum, a trade off of sorts.  Being strong has brought me through dark times, being strong has forced me never to cry out of sadness, being strong helped me raise two kids by myself, being strong kept me in mental armor to make sure I couldn’t be hurt again.  In the end we know that’s an impossibility, because if there is a chink in the armor, someone will find a way into it no matter how small, and tear it wide open.

I used to see that as a test of faith until I realized I invited the intrusion into my fortress, because it gave me a reason to keep fighting, to prove nothing could bring me down.  Strife is our greatest motivator.  Without it we lose purpose.  Without a challenge before us, we fold in on ourselves and become complacent and unsure of what our life purpose is in light of such a change.  It is the daily battle to invent and reinvent ourselves that keeps us alive.  When we give that up, we invite illness on many levels into our bodies and minds.

I’m standing on a plateau wondering where to go from here, because the life change I’m going through has nothing to do with a mid-life crisis, it has everything to do with the loss of an identity that has ruled my life for the past 31 years.

Stay tuned…

With the evolution of our species we have adapted to the changes time has created, but somewhere along the way we abandoned our ability to maintain control of our lives and what surrounds them.  We’re poor or rich, sick or healthy, one color or another, straight or gay, good or evil, and so on.  Then within those very simple black and white labels are the gray areas that expand being poor into a race, a color, a location, which then further breaks down into developing a sense of apathy if it does not affect us personally.

I began writing a list of some of those labels that have been projected into my world, biracial, claustrophobic, single, middle aged, and the list goes on.  Every part of my life has some kind of label.  I used to look at those labels as just ways to describe aspects of my life, but the reality is that as each depiction of where I am in life leaves a connotation that keeps moving me further and further away from who and what I really am.  These ideas of being create a sense of fear and confusion, and eventually pushes the brain into a box to contain thoughts that would place us outside of the very unnatural condition of subjugation to an unseen, but very real force that keeps us bound.

I started thinking about my next writing project, as I have been on an extended hiatus from writing since developing my new label, sufferer of high blood pressure, the silent killer.  You feel great, you feel normal, then one day you’re gone, just like that.  It makes one face mortality day after day and eventually raises the level of fear to a point where it exacerbates the condition.  All of this has raised some rather interesting ideas for my new writing project.  I’m pushing myself back into the skin of a lover of words, a lover of ideas, a lover of impacting lives…a writer.  I won’t kid you or myself, it’s a battle, and one that has me puzzled, because I’ve identified myself with that label in a loving and nurturing way for many years.

I’ve been sweeping aside the debris for almost a week now and am excited about the journey.  This book will be about a label that never seemed real or viable, one I always laughed about which has now become very real and very revealing.

Stay tuned…

It’s been about four months since I first faced my high blood pressure issues.  I’ve always been an extremely healthy person, no childhood illnesses, the occasional cold, my children were born naturally with no drugs through labor or delivery, well you get the idea.   Suddenly I have this thing thrown at me and it takes me somewhere I’ve never really been before…it takes me face to face with my mortality.   As much as we believe, “it” can’t happen to us, the bottom line is, we’re here, then we’re gone, then we recycle and move on.  It’s not a mystery, it’s not an anomaly, it’s not something exclusive to some and not others, it is what it is, part of the process.

So why then do we grasp onto whatever we can to prolong the inevitable.  Is it a sense of not having accomplished what we set out to do?  Is it a need to see out life’s endeavors come to fruition?  Is it the fear of what comes after?  Is it just the idea of not being anymore?

I’ve come to the conclusion that life from birth til death is a journey of statistics.  It’s not really an individual living process, it is unique to each person  Throughout a lifetime, we are in some kind of group or another, some kind of scenario or another, some kind of process or another that we really have no control over.  Fearing what life will evolve into or out of is exactly what controls our growth as intelligent, creative, and independent life forces.  Contributing a life force that can create change, and initiate a thought process that makes our world, our lives, our very existence and experience worthy of the marvel a human life form really is.

We adopt a range of emotions that take us through the everyday life experiences that we believe give us meaning.  There is such a varied sense of being from individual to individual, that it is not surprising we drift through this life like lost sheep seeking just the right place to lie down and rest before we have to venture on.  The connections we make along the way, are not really connections, but more like taps of energy to keep us moving forward.  On occasion we do find that link to another person that makes us feel truly alive and at peace.  All of these encounters happen for a reason, a mutual reason that requires seeing beyond the mundane and forming a union that can move mountains and part seas.  It is what we call “god”.   It is the gift we share as a living species existing in an infinitesimal place of wonder and amazement.

What I can’t seem to figure out is how we came to take it all for granted, how we’ve learned above all else to destroy it, and how egotistical we are to think it won’t turn on us and eradicate an ungrateful life force hell bent on annihilation.  I for one have looked beyond my own banal platitudes to a force beyond my understanding, and embraced just how small I am in the grand scheme of things.  I’ve never felt more gratitude in being allowed to experience the joy of being a part of it all.

Stay tuned…