"I feel like I am stuck inside my head."
There. I finally said it out loud.
The phrase had been skipping like a scratched record in my mind, over and over for the past few days. I could never seem to spit it out. I was starting to feel crazy.
Monday evening and M and I were sitting under one of the giant conifers that punctuate the landscape at Brentwood Park, enjoying a rest and a brew on yet another of our recession-ready BYOB hikes. We circled the vast expanse of green for a long time, trying to find the right tree to settle under. Mothers and their kids were crawling all over the place and you never can tell the vigilantes from the regular folks. Some mothers just flip when they see someone sucking beer in the park, and the last thing we needed was some condescending speechifying courtesy of the Portland PD, so we tried to keep the bottles on the DL.
"What do you mean?," M asked.
"Well, when someone asks 'What are you thinking?' I have no answer. And it is not because I am not thinking anything. Its more that I am speechless. I open my mouth and the words won't come. It is like there aren't any words for what I am thinking."
And these words still did not suffice.
I have thought about it since and come to meager conclusions, tentative, slender:
I feel like I am afraid to think too deeply about the changes that are coming -that if I think too steadily and focus too minutely I will lose my nerve. And I don't want to talk too much about it. I certainly do not want to write too much about it. I never wanted to be one of those freakish mothers who lose all grip on reality, and I feel like, mother or not, I am already losing it. I am scared to look too closely at this thing I am becoming for fear that I will not like her -- that she will be boring and staid or crazy and annoying or pathetic and out of touch. It doesn't make any sense, I know. Does fear ever make any sense? No-- but it certainly has a way of tempering all joy and smudging the shine out of happy eyes.
And then I get to thinking that maybe writing about it is just the thing it needs.
3 comments:
Oh, this makes so much sense to me. But it will be fine. And making the words is maybe not exactly what needs to be done.
Having kids does make you all those things: boring, staid, crazy, annoying, pathetic. It does. If there weren't a countervailing stream of profound interior experiences it would be entirely appalling. It's still pretty appalling, to tell the truth. But you kind of have to let all that go.
xoxo
I remember thinking as a child that somehow adulthood, marriage, or motherhood would somehow change me into something or someone entirely new, but I've found that it is nearly impossible to lose your true self, even when you want to.
If you're not boring, staid or crazy now (the crazy part is debatable), then you never will be.
Ah, that was your cousin kim, I don't know where this ask ari account came from
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