I'm just getting to know myself.
Often, I look at my life. I see the rooms that I’m in. The chipping paint on the walls, the haphazard paint job that only I’m capable of in my fits of designer joy, and the furniture that I’ve picked up from here and there over the last decade and a half of my life. I sit in these room and surrounded by these things listening to the sounds outside my window. I am alone. I am always alone. It’s this nasty little monster that has grown in size throughout my life. My loneliness used to be a friend sitting next to me as I read a book inside my father’s Volkswagen eating potato chips while lost in fictional lives. She would sit there with me and be that friend while other girls were invited to sleepovers, birthday parties, and trips to the mall. Oh, what a good friend she was when first kisses were given and love fluttered in the hearts of others. She helped me be okay. for so many years that I’ve allowed her to move in and have way too much space. Motherhood came and moved her out for a bit. But, now she’s creeping back in and has started to make herself know again.
I’m also scared. I’m scared that if I keep allowing her to rule my life that I’ll sit here at 70 watching the same British crime shows wondering what’s going to happen in the next 10 years of my life. I cry a little when I think of what will become of me if I continue to be the person I’ve always been. I see the lonely old ladies walking down the road or sitting alone somewhere and I see myself being that eccentric apple head doll singing Madonna songs while I walk my latest pet.
Pivot or perish. The name of the game.. Pivot or perish we shall all do the same.
In less than three weeks, I’ll be by myself for the first time in over two decades. It’s a realization that sinks in in these tsunami-sized waves leaving my Fenty mascara a mess. She’s the best thing I’ve ever done, but she’s also been that bandaid door keeping this deep loneliness out. But, here I am writing out all of my yuck, because it’s a chapter in this fucked up beautiful book of me. I'm still writing it. The chapters are all mixed up and all over the place, but I'm determined to figure it out.
This is the good part.
I was texting with a friend. We're not super close, but our conversation became super raw. We wrote of our longing for direction, hope, and a place in this world. It wasn't stupid, banal, or the basic bitch stuff that is the sea salt of most interactions. Something is shifting. It as to. Pivot or perish. Resit or the shit will persist. The slogans I'm engraining to myself. The sifting of the kitty litter of my brain.
Perish if I don't shift and sift. Shift and sift. Pivor or perish. Make a plan. Set a path or perish without one. Winging it won't work.
These photos were taken using the dying flowers fromt the vase in my living room. Wrapped in a paper bag and useless to the world, they're beautiful though they're decaying and soon to be discarded.
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