As I sit here typing, reclined on my bed in the dining room, I’m not sure what I want to say but I know, deep down, that I need to say it, to know it and to believe it. The relentlessness of my thoughts is unbearable at times; creating this swirling cauldron of steaming and bubbling contradictions that simultaneously demand and defy reconciliation.
I’m becoming more confused while I’m becoming more certain. I’m growing more lonely while also gaining a new selfish affection for my own company. I’m getting over my dead lover while also loving him more each day. I’m withdrawing myself from the frenzy that is social media and broadcast news but becoming ever more aware of the decay in the world and the collective despair of its inhabitants. I’m finding light in the world’s religious texts but finding nothing but darkness in those who claim to preach and follow their messages. I’m settling down into the new life I’m making for myself just as everything around me seems to be in the process of being overturned. I’m reconciling myself to my failings as a mother and working to make amends just as my youngest child is becoming an independent adult and can no longer be greatly impacted by my parenting. I’m falling up while the world falls down. I’m just starting to live in a dying world.
Sometimes I have to admit that all of the contradictions makes everything feel hopeless. Why bother working so hard on myself and my mental health when the world around me seems to be going crazy? Why worry about building a life for myself as my body shows signs of reaching its expiration? Why make myself bleed trying to sort through the years of shame and disappointment in order to find my peace when medications and a little weed is all I need to forget about them completely for a while? Why try so hard to become a better mother when my children are no longer children? Why work so hard to solve the puzzles in my mind while it becomes so obvious that my insanity was the only thing keeping me sane for so long?
I don’t know what the answers to these questions are and the foundation upon which I stand in this world is crumbling beneath me more each day. Sometimes I want to be scared and retreat back into the oblivion that has kept me safe for most of my life. But the little light within me glows a more warmly each day and, even as I become more confused about almost everything else and my footing becomes more increasingly precarious, I’m starting to believe I was never supposed to be standing here all along.
Perhaps I was meant to fly.
Thirsty 