Brittle

I feel brittle these days, a discomfiting awareness of angles and haste and chill. Each time I sit down to write, I freeze, erase, and leave. This is never a good sign, this drying up. Some of it is busyness, surely. Between holidays, teacher days, and illness, neither J nor O has had much in the way of full weeks of school since September. I need space and can’t seem to get it.

Parenting is a motherfucking bear. It is hard and relentless and it’s really easy to fuck up, and sometimes I just want to wash my hands of the enterprise. Yes, yes, yes, it’s wonderful and all that jazz, but the daily slog of thanklessness and question marks and laundry and limits is and feels mammoth.

I daydream often and in a deeply soulful way, of land and horizons that are away and vast. To space and slowness and kindness and quiet. To muddy Wellies and reinforced overalls and great gusts of wind.

Daily, I feel half here, half elsewhere.

I want to get off this hamster wheel and away from arrogant billionaires and lying terrors who are never held accountable and too much least-common-denominator behavior. I saw a headline recently about how worrisome it is that people are spending so much time alone, and I get the concern, yet I want to yell, “are you fucking kidding? Have you looked around and/or been in public lately?” There is only so much ugliness people can witness and take, both personally and societally, and shit, I understand the desire to hermit.

I want to have the time to feel bored. To make things, to finish a book, a lengthy thought.

I have a deeply-rooted sneaking suspicion that the world is on some epic, crucial fulcrum. You can keep Jonesing, struggle, or opt out. I prefer C.

When I was little, I wore dresses that twirled and I did not like to be dirty. I also did not like to be wet unless I chose to be wet, via shower, pool, or opted-into slip-n-slide. I woke up early to shower and style my hair, you would not have found me gardening.

And then, as life goes, and then just like Nanny always said, “you can bury your troubles in the garden.” And I’m in the dirt as often as possible, working quietly and trying to make space to hear the quiet inside voice that gets ignored on the regular.

I don’t think that I expected, when I was young, to change so much during life. But I have changed, in many ways. Maybe that’s what middle age is about: coming to terms with and choosing how to honor who you were, are, and may still become.

Anyway, this blog doesn’t seem particularly “good,” but at least it’s something, I suppose. Buon weekend, all.