I lay in my hotel room, atop the city, gazing out at the gray skyline. The feather pillow against my cheek distorts the roar of urban chatter into a malevolent whisper. I stare listlessly at the building across the green.

The facade is built of red bricks and rose hued stone. The window framings are elegant but plain, and serve as the only defining feature of this particular denizen of downtown, a grand old lady from the heyday of World Fair Saint Louis.

The wall nearest me catches my eye. A parking garage clothes the building’s lower half, while her front is dressed in windows floor to ceiling. But this north face is naked sans a singular window. The shade flutters and I realize despite the loneliness in which it is shrouded, there is life within.

I wonder if someone else is watching and dreaming as I am, pondering all that has come and passed. I wonder if they too find deeper meaning in these rare moments of reflection, the simple truths apparent only in solitude.

A length a flesh flashes, perhaps a shock of dark hair. I find solace in the fact another soul is inexplicably connected to mine when the city has rolled up its welcome mats against the coming storm.

I raise my arm in salute. The figure also salutes. I wave my arms above my head and the stranger mimics me. I realize belatedly that like the window, I am alone in the bleak waning afternoon - my reflection my only company.

In some unexplainable way, I am saddened by this discovery. My ray of hope withers and dies a natural death, born of false expectation and a strange sense of melancholy. I close the shades and shut the gray city and my gray thoughts out as merciful sleep descends.

I’m curled up in bed reading a book about a woman who finds herself when it strikes me, this crazy notion. The book isn’t so different, and certainly no more entertaining than the umpteen books I’ve read about women finding themselves, but this one, perhaps by its very lack of interest, causes me to pause. I put the book down and think about writing for the first time in months.

I used to write because there was some momentous shift in my personal world and I needed to document it, to share it, to mourn it or celebrate it. I wrote when I was feeling lost, or torn, or sad or deliriously happy. I wrote about things in the past, things in the present and things I hoped to God were in the future.

But if I were honest with myself, I wrote mostly when I was lonely, which was every time I was alone. See, that’s what they never tell you about motherhood, especially young motherhood, is that you forget how to be alone, and I am certainly guilty of that. So I wrote. And I say wrote in the past tense because it is very true.

As I thought about all those pages of vomited feelings and logs of my tumultuous thoughts, I couldn’t remember the last time I felt the need to write. It was then, sitting under the electric blanket and letting my mind wander, hearing each and every wind outside and the bubble of my soda beside me and the race of my blood behind my eardrums, that I realized that a momentous shift that had occurred tonight and without me even noticing.

It’s been a year since the big bang. A year since the split and almost two years since my oldest moved away from home. When you’re considering a year of cable service, it’s not a big deal. However, a year in your life can be more telling than the decade before it. Such a truth has been very evident in my own life.

But, I digress. A year has passed and in the beginning I wrote every day, multiple times a day. I had blogs. I had journals. I had paper napkins written on with runny gel pens. But I always wrote. One could suggest that I’ve just been busy and that’s why the words have stayed in my head rather than on paper or print, but tonight … tonight, it was evident that there has been a shift.

I worked a normal eight hours and arrived home on time, which for me is rare. Even more rare, the house was empty and quiet when I arrived. My first reaction – a sigh. This means it is me who picks up the trashcan from the curb, me who lets the dog out, me who moves the laundry from the washer to the dryer. Though I did all those things, and got the mail additionally, I could not bring myself to waste the quiet.

I ran a bath and finished a book. Once upon a time, that wouldn’t be cause for exclamation. These days, it is a semi-annual event at best. I took a bath and finished a book and sang a song to the dog, who nervously paced outside my porcelain chaise. I rose, dressed and made a dinner for one. I turned on the electric blanket, grabbed a book and the TV remote controls.

I felt accomplished in my lounging. I’d managed the near impossible feat of finishing a bath, a movie and a book in one evening. I listened to the sounds as evening fell and watched the sun set through the louvered blinds.

But it wasn’t until I sat down to start this new book about a woman finding herself through a journey from trauma to enlightenment that it hit me. I didn’t write. I didn’t even think of writing or desire it or miss it. A whole night alone, and I hadn’t written – I had relaxed and been alone and survived without a dose of melancholy.

There it was - my big realization. I’m not sitting down each night to write. I’m not pacing in my bathroom sobbing over the complete lack of direction in my life. I’m not pining for lands and people that I’ve never met or seen, or wishing I were anywhere but here. I’m. Just. Living.

The story in the book continued as the woman pressed her forehead to the bathroom floor and recited one of those mantras I’ve used myself many times over the years. “I don’t want this life/ marriage/ job/ house/ town/ etc.” I realized in that moment that after years of forehead pressing of my own, of repeating the mantra to myself over and over and screaming it silently in my head, of tears and fights - my head and heart are quiet. Somewhere over the course of this past year, I’ve forgotten to be miserable and wallow in my own literary depression.

I’ve found peace, acceptance and love, and as cliche as it sounds, it has changed my life. So, what you may ask, is my momentous shift? I daresay I’ve discovered how to just be happy.

I think it’s our friends and family that remind of who we’ve been, our lovers that remind us of who we want to be, and quiet time alone that considers the entirety of it and reminds us of who we are. - Me

You have to choose you.

You have to consider what makes you tick, what makes you happy and sad. And if you’re okay with who you see when you look in a mirror.

You have to learn how much of yourself you have to give, how much you’re willing and able to give. You have to learn what you require to be the you that you want to be.

You have to choose your happiness. You have to choose your battles. You have to know who you are… And who you are not.

You have to choose you.

We walk a mile or so down the old country road, hand in hand. I’m savoring every moment because this isn’t something she lets me do often and as my youngest, she is sort of my last chance. More and more these days she would rather gossip with her friends or tease the little boys or talk on the phone until she has literally run out of things to say. Too frequently, we don’t see eye to eye and there are times she makes me cry a heart-heavy tear or two because of her harsh words. But today, she is content to walk in peace beside her old mom, holding hands and talking just the two of us.

She points to a dog itching to break free of his tether and join us, and then pulls me in another direction to watch a lone chicken wandering aimlessly through the field. At times, she seems full of childish wonder, and others like a woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Sometimes we walk in silence and sometimes we talk. We talk about the girl stuff a girl can only tell her mom, the same things I asked my own mother about and some things I would have never thought to question, but my daughter does.

“I’m never gonna have babies young like you, Mama,” she tells me. “Good,” comes my reply. And I’m not offended; I hope she doesn’t. But as I’ve told her, I don’t regret my decisions. Doing anything different could have changed the outcome, and the outcome I see first and foremost is two of the greatest kids I could have ever asked for. They are smart, funny, strong, opinionated… and I actually like my kids, even as teens and pre-teens, which I wonder if most parents can honestly claim.

But I also want them to live their dreams instead of being haunted by the ones that can never come true. I want them to have no limits on what they can do and where they can go and who they can be. I want them to never look back in regret or forward with dread because of their own poor choices. And I want them to figure this all out and be settled with who they are before they face the kind of responsibilities I did at such a tender age.

We walk on a little way in silence and I think of how much a reflection they are of me – only better. My son, not a boy at all anymore, has just begun to break the silence of the last few years to ask me questions about life and literature and what I think about the hard facts of life – mine, his and in general. He’s candid with me about where he thinks I am wrong and I don’t talk down to him where I find him at fault either. My daughter is on the cusp of womanhood and suddenly concerned with which shirts hug her curves and new ways to fix her hair. She asks me sometimes for help, though not often, and I know that regardless of how much I blame myself for when it comes to them– that my kids just love me for me.

They amaze me when I catch them unaware and can simply watch them. How it can be that I, feeling like a mere child myself at times, could have been blessed enough to be here when these little miracles entered the world and even more blessed to be here as they set out to tackle it. I just hope it is enough to buoy me when they fly the nest and I’m left without the job I’ve devoted myself to for as long as I can remember.

I have spent years searching for the perfect love… in life, in writing, in myself and yet I should have known I already had it all along. If only everything in life was as simple and clear a choice as it is for a mother like me to love her children. I think sometimes it is the only thing I know how to do that makes any sense.

My daughter breaks the silence when she points out an old shack without doors, most of the windows smashed or gone. It is hard to find any salvageable beauty in this house we agree and we move onto the next one. This old farmhouse has peeling paint, shutters that hang half on, half off and an old wooden fence that has seen better days. There is trash on the porch and an old truck with no two panels the same color sitting in the driveway. I start to turn up my nose at the house and then it occurs to me rather suddenly that perhaps we don’t have the right perspective to be judging the beauty of this or any of the other old farm houses.

I tell my daughter as much. She looks at me quizzically and I tell her the story of the old farmhouse that burned down. When it burned, the heat and flames were too much for the little fire department and soon all that was left of the old house was a pile of rubble and ashes. Weeks later when the danger was gone, the old owners began to sift through the debris and discovered a tarry black piece of char. When the old man who had once lived there began to rub the edge of it again his sleeve, he discovered a tiny yellow beak beneath the soot. Nothing else could be saved, but that one porcelain bird somehow had survived. When the old man showed it to a friend who had once made pottery she told him the bird had survived because it had been borne of fire and the fire that made it had served to make it stronger and more resilient.

I like to think that just because things look bad on the outside or old or damaged that it doesn’t always mean there isn’t still a hidden beauty inside. Our lives and ourselves, like the bird, can be burned to an almost recognize pile of rubbish. But with enough care, we can come through the furnace of life to be stronger, more resilient and hardier because we are also born of those fires.

I go back to studying the old houses as we walk and let the meaning of my story sink in for my daughter. “Maybe it isn’t the outside we should be thinking about, dear,” I tell her. “Maybe it is what is on the inside that speaks more about the people who live there.”

The old farmhouse with all its eyesores and problems has two brand new bikes parked out front, the shiny new kickstands perched with care and gleaming in the fading sunlight. There is a hand painted mobile hanging from a rusty nail, probably a school project made by one of the young owners of the new bikes, and it looks freshly repainted. It only serves to reinforce the idea that our perspective as observers isn’t totally legitimate or correct. We can’t see why the paint is peeling or what was more important to invest in than the aesthetics of their old home.

We round the block we live on finally and come up on the back of our old craftsman estate. It, too, has peeling paint we haven’t yet gotten around to fixing. The windows still need new molding and we now have to replace a window since it took a rock through it the last time my son mowed. But I know these things were not done because we had more important things to take care of, more on our minds than what a passerby might think of our big old house and more pressing places to be instead of at home working. It has always been the climate inside that has mattered most. We made sure we had what we needed and even tried to make sure they kids had what they wanted too. So it’s okay with me if no one else can see the beauty of our home from the outside, I’ll get to that one day. For now, it is the inside I’m concentrating on.

“What are you thinking, Mom?” my daughters asks. “I’ve decided, honey,” I tell her, “that the inside of a house, the people who live and love there can’t be reflected by the condition of the outside.”

She nods quietly, “just like us, huh Mom?”

Yeah. Just like us

It was so easy to love him in the beginning. He filled my days and nights and I never had to think about the bad stuff, the dark voids.

I hung my hopes on him, and albeit unfairly, assumed he’d share all my dreams. Because soulmates never starve or sleep or worry that tomorrow may be stormy.

Two bodies becoming one is quite simple, it’s two lives becoming one that is hard. You strive to keep your oneness and not sacrifice togetherness. You try to find balance in who you were and who you’ll become.

Loving him is still easy, but hiding the darkness has gotten harder.

fromarestlesspen:

I decided long ago that country music lies. Perhaps older women do make good lovers, she was faster than a $2 pistol and there is a tear in his beer. But, I can say unequivocally that Jose Cuervo is no friend of mine. However, while country lies the lies of a lover - “Oh, you’re the greatest thing that ever happened to me. You have the body of a Venus. You’re the best I ever had” - Tequila lies like a dirty hooker.

Tequila whispers that it will fulfill your fantasies, that it will make you fearless, beautiful and bulletproof. And for roughly $6 a shot, it does. You buy your time, drift off to sleep the sleep of angels and dream of purple elephants with pink parasols ballroom dancing with your dead relatives. Then you awaken and Tequila has stolen all your money, left you sore and abused and alone to bear the shame.

Read More