as my thirtieth birthday came near (ok, it was still 3 months away) i began thinking alot about my life. Like everyone i've spoken to about it, it was like getting ready for a big transition- i couldn't stop thinking about my 20's, how they were over, and about the expectations i had been putting on myself about growing up.. Looking back, my twenties seemed so full- I got pregnant just three months after my 21st birthday to a new zealander after my first trip there, and spent the earlier part of my twenties coping and recovering from that. When I turned twenty five I made big changes- left the new zealander, became a single mother and moved back to new zealand leaving my home friends and family in vermont. After being in new zealand long enough to trully and really miss vermont, i returned and spent the next bit of time re-inventing myself. Who was I trying to be? where was I going? Just as i began i to contemplate the perplexities of my situation, accepting the discomfort of my really big mistakes, and at the same time enjoying my son and his little steps towards Independence, i went form one to another to another and conceived again-
this time with an artist who lead me to california to birth, and become mom again.
During this time of my mother dance, i couldn't help but feel urgency welling up inside of me. something was missing- something was missing- and when i looked, i realized--
it was me.
Again- big questions...who am I? what do I do? so busy with millions of little mundane tasks in a world of war and poverty, carrying my own wounds and worries, i rose with my children to my obligations to show them the light of the world. How long could i do this when my own light inside was muddled and distant?
With two children in tow i went to work finding myself...where was my passion? what was something I was really good at? What did i like to do? Seems funny now- but after nearly 6 years of taking care of other people's needs first, I felt so far from knowing my own self. I started reading- reading anything and everything- i went back to school, i started writing again, and then, I started watching myself making more room for me- slowly, haphazardly, and without organization, i started tearing little holes into the seams of the days to make ore time for things I really likes---picking flowers, reading cookbooks, going to the beach, drinking beer, watching cheesy romances, reading teenage fiction, making movies, dancing naked in the middle of the night in ly kitchen, and cooking with curioustiy and force. I indulged myself by meeting all the farmers at the farmers mrket and taking their experimental crops home with me to create new recipes, I found a bar that had organic beer and and a child friendly happy hour, I videotaped myself walking, driving, waching dishes, and dancing..When the choice came to return to vermont or stay in california, i painfully told my partner I had to go- that i couldn't stay there anymore- it was time for me to return to vermont and for me to take the next steps in rediscovering me. We returned- me with bright excitement and adoration, him with dark clouds of regret and anxiety. We faught crazy fights and threatened to hurt eachother, we invoked panic within eachother, and stirred eachother up in ways that would take years to mend. I would distract myself though- as i am so good at doing- from the death that was awaiting, by working on things that were mine..that little cookbook i started in california because I was bored and needing a creative outlet became a 100 page manuscript and when we would fight or things would get dark, i would reach for it and work on it, or force myself to send it our to yet another publisher. When the publisher responded i knew that i had created this little hole in my world into which i could slip into another. I knew that this was going to be my way out.. out of what? out of old patterns, out of the regret of having not finished anything before, out of my insecurity that i had no talent-out of my nothingness and into somethingness..For the next year finishing and editing that book was what kept me alive after each fight- and each fight pushed me further to finish, and at the same time I was just barely holding on- and felt so mush like I was just flinging myself out into shark laden waters- or an abyss of falure. I worked into the hours of the morning, made my children watch tv on sunny days so I could work, and made hotdogs and pasta salad a few too many times to ever really feel good about..Then I had an opportunity to buy a restaurant and so I took that on too- so that each time a fight arose or i started to sink into my who am i mode, I would just get up and start working harder. Pushing pushing pushing as if i was birthing and being born at the same time. The last three years have been a blur. And it was just a few months ago that (during a bout of pnemonia) i stopped pushing quite so hard and started to look around.. What of this would I want to do again? what of this do I regret? what do I really really want? Then, while rolling basil leaves and slicing them paper thin, the knife would go in slow motion, and the colors all illuminated, and like amber so clear and golden, i would hear my own voice asking for specific things... a penthouse in tokyo...a bath and a filet mignon and buttery potatos... to dance all night with lime on my lips..
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