It's been a hard week. I think these lyrics from The National say it best:
Standing at the punch table swallowing punch
can't pay attention to the sound of anyone
a little more stupid, a little more scared
every minute more unprepared
I made a mistake in my life today
everything I love gets lost in drawers
I want to start over, I want to be winning
way out of sync from the beginning
(it's a really good "woe is me" song but be careful not to listen to it on repeat too many times...it is a gateway drug to nick drake songs that only make you want to do harder stuff)
I won't go into particulars, but suffice it say that this brave new world I inhabit is full of pitfalls and landmines. Oh wait! That's true of every world we inhabit :( (curse you, Plan of Salvation). The strangest part of having a hard week and feeling out of place in my own skin is that as I get older, the more homesick I get for my Mom and Dad. Before I hit my thirties, I don't remember feeling this strange wistful ache to lay on my parents' living room floor while my dad yells at the baseball game/political pundit/ mundane sitcom starring ray romano and my mom makes cheesy biscuits like the ones at red lobster. But now, it's all I want when my heart longs to be understood, my house is too messy to lay on my own floor and I can't even entertain the thought of cheesy biscuits without feeling the massive guilt of years of weight watchers points counting. I want my mommy. I want my first family. I want to not have to try so damn hard to have love, to be loved and to love right.
(Because it will matter to my sweet good husband, I quickly insert this disclaimer that my terrible no good rotten week has nothing to do with him...he is life sustaining and supportive even when it is clear I am crying from a hormonal imbalance and too many diet cokes.)
Is this called running away? I mean, this longing for a simple place where relationships are still complex but somehow lack pretense. If I did decide to just fly home to spend a weekend with my parents and pretend I'm just their daughter and nothing else, is that taking the easy way out? I read in the Conscious Bride that this is very normal during the transition from "maiden" to "wife" (seriously, I really hate that terminology. The word "maiden" makes me about as uncomfortable as the phrase "moist panties".) but I've been feeling it for a few years now. Maybe it's normal as we get older and acknowledge how far we've gone from our childhood, how each step toward our independence has led us further from the protection we came to take for granted as children. Maybe it's normal as we recognize and feel the weight of our parents' mortality. Moms have heart surgery. Dads have high blood pressure and get gray hair. Its disgusting and scary how time takes over. Maybe it's normal when we see our own lives given away in the service of love to children and husbands - when that life that was once our own to hurl at the world as we please no longer has the same aerodynamics. Maybe as I become more connected to the earth (literally, as I plant things as if for years) I long to be where that earth connection all started?
I'm not sure. But I do know that nothing can soothe my soul like a few choice ephithets chucked at a tv screen or a perfectly yellow cheesed disc of carbs. And I could use a bit of that soothing home energy right about now.
