so close to the bone | lean in to the work of life | cast seed to spring winds
Once upon a time, I wrote every day and usually at length. These days, it seems all I can do to manage a haiku (and hardly a good one).
I think this is the part they refer to as “feeling one’s age” only I am getting the 60s and 70s much earlier than my birth certificate says is possible.
There is that word again… possible.
Is it possible I rediscover myself? The being under all this hurt and pain? So much of who I knew myself to be has been shattered on the concrete of this reality.
I am not the caring, loving mother? The fury of that thought as I sit here racked with the outcomes of giving, literally, everything I had (and a lot I clearly didn’t)… more than merely birth, less than Betty Crocker™ perfection, and seemingly, nothing that is visible to any mind but my own.
I am not the competent professional? The list of people who benefited directly from contact with and contribution from me is longer than I would compile and probably embarrassing to a few people currently standing credited with things that rose from my brain.
I was. I was. It’s the tenses that are my tenterhooks at present. That was me. But I’m the only one who remembers? The conflicting glint of dueling Occam’s would be fascinating if I could manifest it in more than words. In the face of the abandonment of family, repeatedly, over life, clearly there are great gaps of continuity and attribution errors.
I suppose it is normal, usual even, that no one cares about such things except me, the one who gets perpetually stuck with the ol’ fuzzy lollipop.
I am no one. Just another old woman easily ignored and relegated in an increasingly unstable and chaotic world.
I think that is not acceptable. What spark remains continues to bridle at “all this”, insisting I could be, do, or manage more.
Ego, most likely. The mind in resolute denial of the physiological and neurological reality no less than my children deny my love and support and sacrifice.
It’s all loose seed here. The winds and the practice make offering up and releasing a slow but effective pursuit.
I am making myself write this pathetic, morose prosy mess so I might get back to the words that uplift and reflect light.
Or at least make something interesting that stands a chance of both outliving me and reflecting better of my capabilities; something it seems everyone is happy to acknowledge right up until it means they should pay me.
Maybe tomorrow.