I feel it today...the aloneness...the loneliness...there is nothing in particular that I can do about it...it is natural...that doesn't make it feel better though. I won't die...I won't feel like this forever... or even tomorrow...but for the moment...I feel it it...it makes me feel colder...less brilliant...less than ordinary...invisible and minuscule in the grand scheme of life....
I don't believe I fully understood this feeling until I was about ten. I always had a sense that I was standing outside of a house looking in immense picture windows...watching someone else's life...imagining what they must be laughing about or sharing or doing; but, it was my mother who created the indelible image for me of what those feelings and fears were...
Her words of wisdom always came at times when I felt I had achieved something important in my young life. The pleasure I was feeling...at that moment...was irrelevant...but she sat me down at the table and placed a glass of water in front of me..."This glass of water represents the world...all of life....Now, place your finger in the middle of the water..." I did...unsure of what repercussions would result in my actions..."Do you see how your finger takes up space...how the water moves away from your finger to make room for you?" I felt...for a brief moment...the ability to affect things.
"Now...remove your finger slowly. See how the water closes up the space where your finger once was placed? Completely remove your finger....see how the water has filled up all of that space your finger made? That's the affect you have on life...that's how much you mean....when you are gone...no one will ever know you were here...no one will care. The world will just fill up that space that you think you fill now. You are nothing...you will never affect anything."
The weight that I felt in my heart and the choices I have made from that moment have had everything to do with that glass of water...I am constantly trying to affect everything...to make a difference...to cause change...not so that I win the Nobel Peace Prize but so that my life will have meant something. Not being able to have children....failed marriage....no hometown....no family...who will remember me when I am gone? Will someone's...anyone's life be alter in a positive way because I existed?
Every year watch "It's a Wonderful Life" and I cry...this year I couldn't watch it....I couldn't think that maybe I am slowly disappearing. I am planning my living will and purchasing life insurance...I'm putting together pictures ...so that someone will know who I am...who I was...not because I feel sorry for myself or I am afraid...but because if I don't speak for myself...who will? This is such a painful and important question to ask...and if I don't ask..no one will ...it's not their job to live my life....to speak for my life...
It is not someone else's job to know that I love wildflowers, not roses...I love tulips because they come back every year or marigolds because they are strong and can weather anything...that I love my cats sleeping on my head or that I love children and am obsessed with the Tudor family...that I dream of visiting Scotland...that I write all the time...I even write in my dreams...that I often know when things are going to happen to people and that I don't say anything because it's not my place to interfere...that I save birds all the time...that I adore the piano and guitar and am a less than a mediocre musician but have a beautiful singing voice that I rarely use...that I love to photograph but hate to have my own picture taken and that I see myself as quite average but will work day and night to earn the belief that anyone has in my abilities...that I believed in Santa Claus until I was eleven and that I love wedding cake with butter-creme frosting...that I'm not afraid of snakes..but can be stopped dead in my tracks by a small spider...and that if someone imitates what I do I will laugh until I cry and if I hurt someone I will spend the rest of my life trying to forgive myself...
I am not more special than anyone else...but I exist...I am more than a finger in a glass of water. I will only disappear if I choose to and in the end...it is my choice what my legacy will be....
Oh yes Mickie! Great post. I have to confess at this stage in the blog, and in my naivete, I didn't know any mother could be as purposely and verbally evil as yours was. Either she was the most evil or no one has ever written about it or I have never had the opportunity to read their words before.
ReplyDeleteP
Sadly, there are many people that are so filled with anger and self loathing that they will use all of their power to burden someone else with their pain...they literally can't carry all the pain they feel and the only way that they experience relief is by seeing someone else suffer....look at all of the domestic violence situation...all of the child abuse...I'm just not holding it in anymore and I'm turning it into something else...but the responses I am getting from so many people is that, my story may sound different but the core of the issue is quite common...some people actually feel that I am talking about them...that's where I start to realize how naive I have been...
ReplyDelete