I slept in yesterday, until 6 am, and had a busy day so I didn’t write in the morning. And like all things I put off until later in the day, it didn’t happen. I didn’t write because the day got away from me.
Sometimes I feel like the time I spend writing is the only time I am really present in my life. So much the cog in other people’s wheels, so much the actor in a play I not directing.
I didn’t intend to develop a daily writing practice. I didn’t intend to really start a blog. It just kind of happened. I mean of course I wanted to write, because no one by accident contributes words to the page. It is a hard and arduous process, especially to do it daily for over an hour. It takes time, it takes heart, it takes a commitment to self that is absent in my life on a lot of levels.
I am struggling with self care. I know it sounds stupid for a 51 year old woman to say this. I mean fuck if I haven’t figured it out by now...but I am struggling. My life eroding into a daily grind where I am there, but hardly present. I can see it. I can feel it and the fact that yesterday I didn’t even write, causes me untold amounts of panic. Like writing is the only thing I do faithfully every day for me. I don’t write for you. I do it for myself.
So not writing yesterday left me feeling adrift and fearful that I only rent this life. I do not hang pictures of my walls, I do not get the new chandelier. I am just renting, I could move anytime. I could up and leave this particular life, so why bother to decorate?
But anyone who knows me knows that I decorate the fuck out of where I live. It is a passion and obsession, so why am I so afraid to decorate and occupy my emotional life. I mean really get in there and take the staring lead? Why do I willing engage in conduct that causes me to be anything but present for this life? My life.
I am not sure and I am not going to guess. I am going to spend a little time reflecting. I am going to take a step back. I am going to withdraw. I am going to see what is going on with me by taking a step back into myself to see what the fuck is going on. Why is it that I do not allow myself the ability to enjoy my own life while occupying it at the same time?
This other centered life has not been a bad one. Seriously. It hasn’t. But somehow I feel I got lost and now I am not sure I can find my way back.
I don’t know if any of this is making sense. I don’t know if you can understand my existential crisis of being more than the things on my calendar. Of which, things that are important to me, often and habitually get redlined.
“I don’t have time for lunch”
“Can’t eat dinner today.”
“I will get to the doctor about that issue some other time”
Over and over again, I have put myself off for others, and lest you think that I am in martyr mode, it is all to avoid myself not win a martyrdom award. In truth, I use all of you to make me go away. You the convenience, ever ready excuse as to why I can’t ______.
I see it now. I have admitted it. And now I have to do something about it. Take back this life that I keep turning over to the day, while wholly missing the point. Where am I in my life? Does it feel like mine? Do I guard it? Do I protect it? Does it matter to me?
Hard questions for me today. Because regardless of what you might think the answers are, I know the truth. I am always up for grabs. Maybe not from all of you. Maybe not all of the time, but there is someone out there that is always capable of making me leave me. And that is a sucky awareness to have and an even suckier awareness to admit.
But I own it because I want to change it. Really. And to be honest, it terrifies me. So, fuck it, here I go...
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