A snippet here, a scrap there. Floating slips of a torn up life in the wind, feelings free like confetti strewn on the streets of New York City the morning after New Year’s. Shallow screams, fallow eyes, rings like a mad woman’s eyeliner application. I think of sfumato, the smoky, ethereal wisps of painters from the sixteenth century. There’s not much, just fragments, bits and bobs and bolts of a life not really lived, not truly inhabited. Adrift, awashed, ashamed and lost, rudderless and wild, moved about by the currents of someone else’s wishes and desires.
This is what life has felt like. I have been a chameleon of sorts, easily adapting to those around me, easily adopting behaviors and manners and ways of moving in the world that aren’t one hundred percent mine, aren’t authentic and real, at least not entirely. I learned early to not share, not show, the insides of me, the real thoughts, the real yearnings. My personality—outwardly—projected strength, projected character with backbone. But I yearned for acceptance, I yearned for love, and I took it from whomever gave it to me, even if it wasn’t what I needed, or wanted, or desired. I played dress up, make-believe, the person I thought others wanted me to be, their unspoken demands transmitted with a sideways glance, the thin set of a mouth, the twitch of a finger.
And then, shame. Blossoming like a peony in summer, like a fresh wound bleeding. Shame of the real me, fearful. Love and marriage, dismissal and divorce. Years spent alone, wondering why it fell apart, wondering why I was glad it did. Enough stillness for a lifetime, enough solitude even among others. A new city, a new love. And while the world fell silent, mouths hidden behind masks, the world on fire with the tumultuousness, this love sustained and took away, pulled me apart. And the inevitability of being alone again. Those first few months, coming home to a new apartment, cold and silent, sparse and bare, tears enough to wash me clean a thousand times over. Building up again, trying desperately to claw back a semblance of order, of worthiness, of trying to be lovable.
The realization that no, love doesn’t come from outside one’s self, but from within. The realization that the shame I carried, like a stone on my back, hard and unmoving in my chest, wasn’t something I ever gave up. I didn’t know I could let it go at any time. It took forty-five years to understand, to start to finger the shame, turn it over, notice the soft soil of a soul underneath. No one but me could till that land, no one but me can make it fertile.
This is an unmoored life.
Some may call it a midlife crisis but that brings up images of old men in sports cars dating their daughter’s friends. An old man I am not, nor do I desire fast cars and young love, or what I imagine is love. Midlife crises have changed. Or, at least, the midlife crisis I am going through doesn’t look like the narratives of the eighties and nineties. And it’s not a crisis. No, it’s a coming home, to myself, to who I want to be. The beautiful thing about being in your forties, having a few decades of deceit and pursuit and mistakes and falterings is that you stop caring what the world wants of you. You stop looking around for the approval, stop wanting the hungry eyes traversing your body like licking butter off a corn on the cob, stop caring that you fit into some ideal type of woman. Well, stop caring enough to step into that solitary space, hold the darkness close, learn to inspect it and think about it, without thinking that it is all of you.
My life is unmoored. I am adrift. I am out here in this rowboat, without oars or a rudder, and I am sitting here under a harsh sun. I am trying to figure out the direction I need to go, or rather the direction I want to go. It’s an interesting place to be. Letting the things I thought I had to be go. Staying with the hurt and shame, reexamining what I’ve become and who I am. Starting from scratch, like a baker in the early mornings, flour and water and the rising bacteria of yeast, the chemical reactions subtle and blooming. Instead of trying to be perfect, I am giving permission to be imperfect, to be the faulty human I am, and love all of her.
I don’t know if this will resonate with anyone. I imagine it will; I’m not that unique. But, if I’m being truthful, I don’t care if it will. I’m still nervous of horrible comments, insensitive things like bullies on a playground, like the boy that beat me in my front yard when I was in elementary school. I’ve been through some shit and survived. I can survive faceless bullies, rude remarks, horrible screeching birds cawing from the safety of the sky. So, I will write, and I will post, and I will let the truth of who I am and where I’ve been and who I am becoming laid bare on these screens, in my journal pages, wherever I can lay down words and thoughts and imperfect grammar for those who might find a sister here, a fellow traveler on this road of rediscovering who we are after life has bruised us, marked us up with scars that cannot disappear. And I will let love and curiosity lead me, guide me.