When I first started blogging here in 2006 (!), I was publishing a post almost once a day. Sometimes twice. It was such a help (crutch?) in the crisis cesspool where I found myself flailing about in my first marriage. Still funny to say that: first marriage. When I got married to The Husband (now Wasband), I remember being pretty. darn. sure. that I had skipped the 'starter marriage' since I was in my late 20's before I wed. Silly me.
Anyway, the frequency of posts here was crazy - I had several of them in Draft mode at any given time, ready to publish. I was a writing, posting, navel-gazing machine. I needed to be. I had lived in a Stepford machine for years by then. Suburban driving, khaki-and-twinset-wearing, toddler-wrangling, freezer-meal-cooking, ignore-all-internal-hopes-and-dreams machine. I didn't even listen to music during those years, unless it was the theme song to Kipper or Blue's Clues, or any kid show on Noggin, Disney, PBS Kids, or Nick Jr from 1999-2005. Seriously. And I loved music.
I look back now in amazement and wonder how that happened. And I really don't know. I was in a fog. Now, the part of the fog where I played and danced and made stuff with my kids - that part was wonderful and I miss it dearly now that they are in high school. The part where I was at home with them 24/7 I now treasure. As if the universe knew I was about to get very very screwed, and gave me that one gift in the shitstorm that has been my entire life. Of course, I didn't appreciate as much as I should have while it was happening - who ever does? We always discover how truly magical something was as we turn our head to look back at it.
Then the posting here became less frequent after a year or two, then the separation and divorce 2009-10. And that whole kettle of crazy years happened, until we trickled down to - oh hello, it's been 16 months since I posted? really? I do think about this blog a lot. But the brain synapses moving from thinking to logging-in: rare.
A few days ago my daughter asked me: if I could, would I go back and not do a fairly recent certain thing? I said "oh honey, if I could go back in time and change stuff it would be waaaaaaaay before this decade. I would go all the way back to college and do a lot of things so differently that your question wouldn't even be relevant." And that's true. Although it didn't directly answer her question, because frankly I didn't have a good answer for it. The majority of my life decisions have been so poorly executed, the default answer should probably always be: yes, I would change it. no, I wouldn't have done it.
There are Golden People, who go through life on gossamer wings, making perfect decisions and having the universe line up in formation around their life. I gawk at these people, and covet their Midas touch on the world as they pass through it. I am not, nor have I ever been, one of them. I think I'm pretty damn amazing in the middle of this septic tank the universe has surrounded me with, but sometimes I mourn. If I had grown up in a safe environment, without trust issues, or douchecanoe people along the way ... how great could I have been - could my life had been - if I had walked through it fearless and confident. Pretty damn great I think.
Yes, of course it could be worse, and I count the blessings I do have daily, blah blah. But this is my blog, please don't require starving-children-perspective of me in this safe place where I come to navel-gaze.
