Sometimes, the wanderlust surges to be unbearable. To travel, to get lost, to assimilate and wander, to sidestep this current life trajectory and be another me. I am envious of travelers. I feel a loss of mobility.
Home is where I do my chores, where I raise my child, where I work. I am here 99% of the time, 24 hours a day/7 days a week. I spend most of my time online, "goggled into the Metaverse" as it were, while my meatsuit, now executing the primary mode "Mominatix", sits in the same rooms, all day, each day - thank God for social networks, online shopping, twitter, email and IM. The internet is the only place I am free to roam, the playspace to match my mind's need for data and stimuli.
When I am not staring at a computer screen for work, I am looking at/after my son. When I am not washing bottles, doing laundry, feeding, changing diapers, rocking to sleep, singing, baby-talking, or grousing to my husband about the perceived perpetually imbalanced division of parenting responsibilties, I go to the Net because it's the only "me" time I have left. I can't visit friends much anymore, nor do they visit me. No one wants to bother me. Everyone assumes I am "overwhelmed" and "swamped" and "doing baby priorities" and it's true. And I have to remind myself that there's nothing wrong with being where I am in my life, that raising Phoenix is a worthy and important job, and that a mother should dedicate her life to raising her children.
But I have heretofore defined myself by my independent movements, my agility, my multiplicity, my mobility, by the dedicated maintenance of a network of profound long-term friendships.
So this current reality, laden with new responsibilities and priorities, cuts. Clipped wings hurt. I can't do much of what I used to, I can't be as free as I once was. So *I* can't be who I used to be. I can't get on a plane and lose myself in alternate realities as I love to do. I am bound to this life, now. Yes, I know I chose it. Yes, I know resistance is futile. Yes, I know this is my "next level" and "unexplored territory." Knowledge never really cures, it consoles at best. Weary sighs of resignation, useless tears, staring blankly at wall. Face the baby. Initiate blessings-counting sequence.
Are these unenlightened thoughts? Have I not yet completely surrendered to my own evolution? I look at my baby and know there is no other path other than being his mother, with all the selflessness and sacrifice of selfhood that entails.
The key to not feeling tired is not letting oneself feel, at all. Feelings are an indulgent luxury. Now is not a time to be bogged down in feelings. Not when there is so much to do.
xoxoxo Carmen.
Posted by: heathervescent | September 30, 2007 at 03:20 PM