Sometimes I’m struck by how adult I feel. There are all these responsibilities hemming me in and forcing me to make rational decisions. But most of the time I feel like I’m going through a second set of teenaged years- this one marked by events instead of age. Hormones are still a suspect. I’m obsessed with my body, no one understands me, I have wild mood swings, I’m painfully unsure of myself.
It’s hard to change without getting tripped up by all the real and imagined things in your way. Remember that movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”? I wouldn’t erase the pain of Tommy Jr leaving us. I would erase the anxiety filled spelling tests of grammer school, the times-table races that I always finished last while the other kids would stare quietly at my scratching pencil. I would erase the failed auditions for public high school plays, the public speaking performances when the judges never understood why I presented “Waiting for Godot” as a comedy. I would erase the poetry class I took at boarding school with the professor who thought my work got worse the harder I tried. I didn’t get a good grade until I completely gave up and wrote the poem “Why I Hate Poetry”. I got laughs but resented having to make a joke out of something I wanted to take seriously.
It’s not reasonable to resent going through the little hardships of life. It’s just that those are things that sometimes tug at me when I’m trying to really change.
I want to read “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, and my friends keep sounding relieved when I tell them a Kindle version hasn’t been made yet.
Tommy Jr would be five months old today. I’ve decided to stop wondering when I’d stop calculating how old he’d be, and what he’d be like now. I haven’t been able to stop wanting to snarl at people who come too close and sneer at people who’ve stayed too far. I went into Marshall’s and got a punch in the heart when I walked past the rows of hilarious baby Halloween costumes, and the little onsies that say “I’m Thankful For My Grandpa!” and other clever sayings written and orange and yellow block letters.
When the baby first died I went back and forth between wanting desperately to get pregnant and wondering if I’d ever be able to try again. Now that I’m sure I want to try, and pretty sure when I want to start, I think the time will pick up again. Lately the daylight minutes have dripped along, torturing me summer traffic. Then when it’s finally late enough to go to bed I lie there with my eyes open, watching the clock slip towards to morning.
This is so weird. I was thinking about ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ last night, thinking about how I wouldn’t erase the 6 months I had with Stevie for anything, but sometimes I know it would make things so much easier right now. That’s my favorite movie, too. xo