These are the fast and dirty ramblings of a woman who is barreling straight into her middle age. These writings come from the middle of her life, not a particularly bad time either. She’s not freaked out. She doesn’t sit on the couch all day watching soaps and fantasizing about a life completely out of reach. She is not overweight. Not married to a balding guy who watches sports and says “yes, dear.” She’s not a liar, she doesn’t spend an exorbitant amount of time chatting with the other mothers on the schoolyard in the hopes that she will be loved and understood by them. It’s true that she is invited to their weekly knitting nights and their holiday cookie decorating parties, but she rarely goes, not because she doesn’t like these women, who are mostly Christian and mostly very normal and actually very nice, women who wear sweaters decorated with Easter Eggs and pumpkins during the appropriate holidays. Women who probably don’t have very good sex with their husbands and who don’t know how to tell the truth at home, women who are not particularly self reflective and who haven’t spent enough time in therapy. Women who she might be afraid to run into at one of those end of the year parties in someone’s backyard because they would be drunk and then the awful truth of their lives would come spilling out and it could take hours and she’s such a good listener and she would be stuck.
No. She is not like many people barreling into their middle age that wake up one day and realize that they’re unhappy and living a life without joy or love or passion.
She is not that woman. She is independent, a writer with her own teaching practice and a couple of healthy scoundrels posing as children. She has a good-hearted husband, an artist who marches to the beat of his own drummer. This is a woman who has an excellent life on paper; books published, students who appreciate her, a great family, excellent friends. A woman who gets to the gym at least 5 times a week, who is healed by music and coffee. A woman who dances, who dresses and who loves color.
And yet, these are the writings of a woman who has a darker side, a not for public consumption, not for prime time side. A side that she fears the people in her life would worry about.
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These are the fast and dirty ramblings of a woman who is barreling straight into her middle age. These writings come from the middle of her life, not a particularly bad time either. She’s not freaked out. She doesn’t sit on the couch all day watching soaps and fantasizing about a life completely out of reach.
3 comments:
thank you for writing down what i cannot say out loud. i completely relate to you.
i have read your entire blog twice and it is healing to me...has allowed me to not feel so alone.
thank you.
kate
... a woman whose writing I hope not to miss a word of. I'm so inspired and energized by the pace of your pieces. What a great find!
Sometimes women who knit and and invite other women to art groups have very good sex with their husbands and are already honest with themselves. Sometimes lightness and fun is what is behind the banal presentation.
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