The other day, I was chatting with a friend and in our conversation I blurted out how my life
was really all about making enough money to cover my bills. I’m not living an extravagant life and each month, I’m making ends meet, but having an existence that isn’t that fun in the process. While I have a life that’s comfortable by the standards of many, it still isn’t the sort of shit that grabs me by the hair and whispers in my ear. It’s my own fault of course. I did this to me. Took away a lot of the magic in life because of this settling in and sticking with this life that is just okay.
For the past 17 years, I’ve made my life in Westport, Connecticut. In this town, I don’t feel as if I belong. That’s really okay, because I don’t. I am not a wife/mother in the traditional sense that is what makes up the majority of the women in this town. I live on the fringe and hold onto my world by my own dim at time wits. I moved here when Cat was six after spending the last seven years in Taiwan. Her English was suffering as a result of only hearing it from us and spending most of her day at a Chinese kindergarten. It was the time to either dig in and stay forever or move so that she could have an education in English that I could afford and assist her with stateside. So, we came and here I stay though she has gone off to enjoy the start of her own life. While it’s been a bit of a difficult shift at first for me, I’ve reached the other side and am now fully embracing this part of my life. With this hugging up to my reality, I realize how much it sucks at times because I don’t think this is my last stop.
I stayed for Cat and giving her a “stablish” base in her life. I wanted her to have the same friends and a string of memories of being surrounded by familiar and good things. For this, I am so grateful for the life I built here. She had and has some of the same friends that she’s had since she was six years old. This weekend, she’s coming home to see the completion of her design work at the opening of the latest exhibition at the museum she worked at for the last four and a half years. I’m excited to see her, have made up a room for her now that I’m back in the master bedroom she had for years, and I’m looking forward to feeding her for a day or two.
I’m lost here in the suburbs. I go out when I have to in order to make money and see people every now and then, but I stay in my side of the duplex shifting my possessions and keeping some semblance of normal in a life that I’ve been trying to hold onto for so stinking long. I look around at all of the stuff that fills the rooms in this home and haven’t any real attachment to any of it and think about what it would take to start over somewhere new.
I’m at a crossroads. I know I can sit here and hunker the fuck in and stay until I’m an old lady (older old lady), but is this it? Am I going to be on this hamster wheel of an existence for the next 40 years trying to make a life in a cage that isn’t really for me? These are the questions I ask myself because this isn’t the most exciting existence I’ve had yet. I need to find a way to somewhere new. Somewhere I can see faces I haven’t seen before and smile with that unfamiliarity. Westport is the longest I’ve lived in one place since I moved from my childhood hometown when I was 22 to go to Paris. Seventeen years is a long time to be in one spot.
Last week, I photographed an event and was struck by the way people who I’ve seen for years will walk by and not engage in a head nod or even an upturn at their mouth when they see me. With heads stuck in the air, I am invisible to them. It doesn’t hurt or bother me as I know this sort of person and people exist all over the world, but I do realize that there’s an abundance of them in some places and since the stick up my ass isn’t so rigid, I don’t like it.
But, I’d best go walk the dogs and enjoy the day. I’ve got to get my hustle on this week to get my bills paid, home clean and ready for the entry of Cat, and some beautiful movement going in my life. Here’s to crossroads and figuring shit out. I’m looking forward to another 40 or so years of life knowing that I’m ready to take on something new.