the map of my world gets smaller as I sit here, pulling at the loose threads--
Why have I tried so hard for so long? I thought maybe that it would make me loved. It didn't help--people love for their own reasons, not mine. And they love in their own ways, not mine. It probably would have been just as well for me to not worry so much and just enjoy the moments as they came. Alas, I'm apparently not wired that way. I kept looking forward to the future, checking up on how well I was pleasing, making the "right" choices as part of the old guarantee: you make the right choices now, and you'll reap the benefits when you're older. Banking virtue for the future, I guess. Here's the thing: all that striving for perfection, all that careful attention to what's Right And Good: and I've found myself in the position, in the fall of 2008, at 35, of wanting to permanently erase my map.
I need a new map, a new script. I have looked longingly at pictures of faraway places, wanting to just disappear, reinvent myself, work as an English Language teacher in some faraway Asian location where they eat fish & noodles. That's no solution, but it does speak to my desire for freedom--not from the people that love me & need me, but from myself. Therein lies the rub, of course: it's myself I need an escape from, and there's no getting away from me. Hamlet knew it: "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."
I need new dreams, new wishes. I won't blame myself, because this has been the only road I know, the only wishes I know to have. It's been the only life I know how to live. It's now time, however, to forsake the old map and the bad dreams.
But how does one rebuild a life?
1 comment:
Rebuild one day at a time surrounded by those who love you. M-I-L
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