It’s lunchtime and I’m
drinking the last half of the Racer 5 that I started last night. I haven't had
beer in the house for weeks...because I feel better. After months of turmoil, I
finally found some balance and grace. I crack open another beer; is this a sign? Is
that a twinge of anxiety I feel? Am I self-medicating again?
I haven't blogged in
months...again. Been thinking…again…of retrofitting the blog. I write about
life as a single-parent, a homeschooler, an anarchist, a rebel, a writer?…none
of it works because what I really want to write is authenticity. I affix labels to my
philosophy and ways of being to try to share and define who I am, but find the label quickly begins to bend words; the
adjectives start to coerce. I want to get to the bottom of things, find truth.
Because so much writing is tainted with strategy; get readers clicks, go
viral, create the image you project of yourself.
So, this blog just is today. Label
less. If I must decide on a descriptive adjective, I will aim to make
that adjective “authenticity.”
Its hard to blog when you
are changing so rapidly; as the insights pass through, and chapters come to a
close and begin again, and end and begin, I scarcely have time to write before
my writing looses relevancy, before I finish one post, I realize I am living another. But now, I hope, I have
reached a point in which my life is entering a new manageability… but prior to
right now…
Months of anxiety,
depression, confusion. I smoked a bit of (state-sanctioned) cannabis and I
drank beer, though not like a drunk.
I’m too old to drink like a drunk and get away with it. A couple beers in the day, to stave off the anxiety and fits emotionally induced
paralysis. I am a single-mother. I
don’t have the luxury of letting my demons knaw my toes, of hiding, of sleeping
it off. I am the Earth and she is the moon. Though I am tempted to feed and taunt my
psychosis; feel around in the darkness in the deepest parts of my soul and then exorcize
it all. I
self-medicate to mute, just a little, that incessant scratching and to soften the
pointy shards of glass that cut me just a little too deep. I self-medicate
because I know myself better than any doctor…anti-depressants are a last resort
for me... I don’t like them. Where
am I going with this...well, I am drinking a beer and I haven't drank a beer in
my house since I stepped out of the hazy cloud of confusion and anxiety a few
weeks back. Am I self-medicating or just having a beer?
It is three days later, and
I realize, I like beer. If I have it in the house I will drink it daily. So I won’t keep beer in the house, and
save my drinks for times when I have someone to share them with.
This summer was to be one of
creativity and space; my self-help retreat from the ocean of brilliant all-encompassing
energy of my beautiful daughter. She had 5 weeks of summer camp. I had thought
that motherhood had taken from me a piece of myself that, now that Ramona is
old enough to be more independent, I would be allowed to begin to regain. Or maybe I just read that somewhere? I
lost touch with myself, I thought. I have been walking a path that is decided
divergent from my own, cause babies do that to mothers, especially the creative
ones. All I needed were lots of “free” hours to impose some sort of art therapy on myself, returning
as a more complete, creative and whole human being, ready to take on the
struggle of motherhood and the world with evermore grace, and surety in who I am.
It turned
out that in those days when I sent my child away 5 days a week to summer camp, I wouldn't
actually get in touch with any of that spiritual, creative mojo that motherhood
must have robbed from me. Actually,
I sat around, in a panic, with no idea why. Incapacitated, depressed, lonely,
anxious, useless, drowning in the mess of a house I had no energy to maintain. Wow, is this who I am inside? When
I picked up my daughter from camp I would feel like I still hadn't had enough time to
myself, cause if I had had enough
time to myself I would magically be reunited with me, my true identity, who I
really am. But none of that happened. The real me, the supremely
authentic me, was sad depressed and anxious, immobilized and even a little it mean. Huh, maybe it isn’t the act motherhood that steals away a woman’s identity. Maybe the devaluation of mothering was part of stripping women and children of their place in society. It seems as much, have you noticed: men have begun to take on parenting more, and parenting is becoming more revered. But still, the stay at home mom is still looked at as sacrificing her life and her identity.
