It's amazing to me how quickly we can become entangled in all of the hopes, dreams and desires of our lives. Then, when something shows itself to be undesirable, we have become so involved in all aspects of its existence, we lose the ability or maybe the objectivity to see our way to change.
I think about this when I think about the everything I went through after my husband died. Undoing all the choices we made together so that I could survive on my own. Changing jobs, moving back from DC. Getting sued in the process and giving up a wonderful opportunity that no longer made sense.
I think about this when I consider what I must do now; no longer with OSFC and stepping slowly out of the field to move toward another that I resonate more strongly with at this point in my life. I think about the two houses I own, the collapse of the housing market. I think about my friends here and my friends there and I consider what choice I would prefer to make.
I think about this when I consider my body; my health. I haven't taken care of myself as I am used to doing. I haven't been a runner since before my back injury in late 2006. I haven't done yoga since Mike died in 2007. I haven't focused on eating and diet and balance in food. I've regularly had too much to drink since living by myself.
I think about all of these things for my life and I know that the solution is found in taking it slowly.
The only way to handle truly freeing yourself is one step at a time. It's like untangling a fine gold chain that has been sitting in a jewelry box getting knotted into a lump as other pieces are moved in and out. Take out your tweezers, your magnifying glass and take a look at it. Start at the knot that is easiest to untie. You will see the chain slowly unravel, lengthen, regain flexibility and find a new life. Even if the chain breaks in a weak spot, it can be soldered back together; better than ever.
And before I know it, I will be stronger than ever.
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One of my favorite literary passages.
"Henrietta said: once I was a young girl, very much like any other young girl, interested in the same things, I was exemplary. I was told what I was. that is to say a young girl, and I knew what I was because I had been told and because there were other young girls all around me who had been told the same things and knew the same things, and looking at them and hearing again in my head, the things I had been told, I knew what a young girl was, we had all been told the same things. I had not been told, for example, that some wine was piss and some not and I had not been told . . . other things. Still I had been told a great many things all very useful, but I had not been told that I was going to die in any way that would allow me to realize that I really was going to die and that it would be all over, then, and that this was all there was and that I had damned well better make the most of it. That I discovered for myself and covered with shame and shit as I was I made the most of it. I had not been told how to make the most of it, but I figured it out. Then I moved through a period of depression, the depression engendered by the realization that I had placed myself beyond the pale, there I was, beyond the pale. Then I discovered that there were other people beyond the pale with me, that there were quite as many people on the wrong side of the pale as there were on the right side of the pale and that the people on the wrong side of the pale were as complex as the people on the right side of the pale, as unhappy, as subject to time, as subject to death. So what the fuck? I said to myself in the colorful language I had learned on the wrong side of the pale. By this time I was no longer a young girl. I was mature."
Donald Barthelme from Henrietta and Alexandra in Overnight to Many Distant Cities (ISBN 0-399-12868-9)
Being mature, I still often wonder which knot to untangle next. This Thanksgiving morning it's bake pies. Then it'll be "carry on". Such is life for me on the "wrong side of the pale".
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