Where am I?

Floating in an abyss somewhere.

Somewhere between fifty expositions of my heart, I realised that one person constantly came to the fore as my constant source of musing. Labour felt something like this; caught between four walls closing in on me. No way out.

Maybe, he was a nomad like the rest of his clan, attaching fast, and then a little and then letting go. He did not like to live with regrets- and for that reason he could not quite admit his mistakes. This was unbearable to me because I lived with a microscope on the past- looking for the ‘golden thread’, the string, the meaning, the reason, the story. But rooting deeply to a moving island does not make it dry ground.

I’m spinning- as if the pin on this compass has been dislodged.

The first part of my life was about the woman who bore me. The second part of my life was about the one who took over. The third part of my life about negotiating (acknowledging, appreciating) the influence and aura of the men in my life and then circulating in the wider orbit- the deep loose strong weak connections of the women I grew up with.

He will miss the big things. I will miss him in the small ones, I already do. How do two people who together owned a chunk of my earth move to the farthest end of the world at the same time? I’m alive but I have stopped kicking. I lean like the trunk of a tree deeply cut on its side, gasping for air, leaves hanging from the side over a determinedly shifting river.

I’m clinging to verses from the Original Form like it’s life or death because it is.

His biggest fear is being ordinary. Mine is being extraordinary. He has never lived by the rules. I shy away at the sound of my own opinion. Under the thunder of the men who have loved me, I seem to have shrunk and shone at the same time. And now, its time, I saved the best made omelet for myself, remembered what I like to cook- do I even like to cook? I ate the biggest strawberry in the pack yesterday. And the other day I saved a little bit of the orange juice I had squeezed for (Not So) Little One.

“Mummy, is there still juice in there?” he had asked.

“Yes.”

“Is it mine?”

“No. I’m going to drink it. It’s mine.”

“Why?”

I’m practising how to become my own muse.

…she laughs without fear of the future…