the authentic life

so i realized something this week. i know i realized it a thousand other times before but wasn't able to do anything about it so i didn’t waste any time thinking about it. what i realized is that for a long time now i haven't been living authentically and it was squeezing the air out of me.

it's true,  i've been lucky in that i've been able to hold onto pieces of myself throughout this whole motherhood gig, but only by the skin of my teeth (whatever that is). even the school, as much as i was able to inject it with parts of myself, wasn’t for me. it was never fully mine. i don’t mean that in a financial ownership sense—what i mean is that everything i did there was for someone else. for my kids, for the community, for my friends, and yes, for the whore who eventually walked away with it all.

but now, now i have an opportunity to take a more authentic path, to take joy from  the sum of my accomplishments and really acknowledge my self-worth.

i had a moment of clarity on the bathroom floor after a visit from my (now ex-) friend jose cuervo (meanwhile, do you realize how many calories in the average margarita? 780. seven hundred and eighty. the hell? that right there is enough to make me stop), and realized that this was it. this was the moment i could choose to succumb to whatever ailed my tortured spirit or it was the moment i could start to live for myself again.

i started simple. i began by giving myself permission not to work. not to blog. not to do anything at all if i didn’t feel like it. i started reading. and listening to music. MY music. not thomas the effing tank engine or bless her, the crazy chick with curly hair who jumps around singing about having a pig on her head (i actually like her, just not all.the.tiiiiiiiiiiiimmmuuuuh.) i got my feet tattooed with henna, and bought a small, leather-bound journal (and wrote in it!). i allowed myself the pleasure of cooking. i cleaned my house. i started rearranging furniture and painting tired old rooms. i sat on the beach. a lot. i live less than a quarter mile from the ocean and until this summer i could count the number of times i’ve sat on the beach in the seven summers we’ve lived here on two hands. and after i felt quiet enough in my body i acknowledged my pain and my anger and decided to let it go.

[aside: i’m not pretending i don’t still have moments of absolute mind-bending rage about what happened, but i don’t hold onto it anymore. i give myself that moment and then i’m onto something better.]

and then i began to acknowledge the opportunities around me and thought really hard about what it was that i wanted to do with my time. and the door to the school closed and a window opened on the other side of town.

i am climbing through that window. because it’s my window and on the other side of it is my work and I need it. i deserve it.

Comments

[slouching mom]

Oh, baby! That is AWESOME. Some people never figure that out, not in their entire time on earth.

(And, BTW, how cool is it that you live a quarter-mile from the beach? Jealousy from these inland parts!)

[Jody]

Congratulations on finding your window. I hope the climb to reach it isn't too strenuous -- but just strenuous enough to be worth it.