Just like starting over

Our life together is so precious together
We have grown, we have grown
Although our love is still special
Let's take a chance and fly away somewhere alone

It's been too long since we took the time
No-one's to blame, I know time flies so quickly
But when I see you darling
It's like we both are falling in love again
It'll be just like starting over, starting over

Everyday we used to make it love
Why can't we be making love nice and easy
It's time to spread our wings and fly
Don't let another day go by my love
It'll be just like starting over, starting over

Why don't we take off alone
Take a trip somewhere far, far away
We'll be together all alone again
Like we used to in the early days
Well, well, well darling

It's been too long since we took the time
No-one's to blame, I know time flies so quickly
But when I see you darling
It's like we both are falling in love again
It'll be just like starting over, starting over

Our life together is so precious together
We have grown, we have grown
Although our love is still special
Let's take a chance and fly away somewhere

Starting over (c)

When we left Barbados, I didn't have time to stop and reflect on the time spent, lessons learned, growth, progress, great leaps made.  We had too much to do.  We still do.  And not just the "you'll never find the right time to do it so just do it" too much to do, but really I have a lot to do to get us settled into life in the United States, in New Jersey, where I said I would never return, to get Lily ready for school, to get us ready for the next phase of our lives.  I have taken a long time to return to writing because the waiting, the receiving, the unpacking, the unpacking, the unpacking, and the breaking down of boxes, crumbling of paper, stuffing of said paper into huge garbage bags to hopefully be recycled has been too much. 

My emotions have been all over the map.  We were in an empty house that took days and nights to clean after the previous messy, slightly disgusting tenant got her stuff out, well downstairs in the basement, with two girls that we'd taken from their home on a desert island, who had no toys, games, movies, anything really to do except for wait.  Wait for us to get it together, doing it while making it look like fun, doing it while making it look like we were actually doing it or anything together.

When I came back to New York one year into our two year stint in the Caribbean, a friend of mine who has encouraged my writing, the stories told, the openness of my telling them said something along the lines of, you can't have the story end with the City Mom getting divorced and leaving with her children.  You must go and seize your life, live that experience, feel it, share it, remember it.  I did go back and try, excited by her excitement really, enthusiastic about telling these crazy stories of monkeys and coconuts and citrus rashes and left side of the road driving on the right side of the car.  I made friends.  I let my children love that country, let them believe it was their home, let them need me more than they probably should have.  I held them close and made my family look like one.

When we got back to the States, Didier got a job offer and we both jumped at it, excited at how fortunate we'd been, how serendipitous and fortunate, how we were on the path back to...something.  I am not actually sure what.  I do know that being back home, in a less stressful place, a place that I know because I come from here, physically, spiritually, mentally, a place where I can walk, breathe the air, I am starting to feel myself warm up, thaw from the chill that Barbados, that scorching hot island that ripped my heart out and made me eat it.  And now I am burning.  My heart beats out of my chest every night because I am so sad, so pissed, so angry and I am just not sure at what.  I can admit that I am raging but I am really just shouting to the air.  I wait for the girls to go to sleep so they do not have to work this out with me but they really are anyway.  They know I am wounded and I hope to God they do not think it comes from them.

I waited two years to let it all out.  The prison that was my life in Barbados has released me, but now I have nothing else to blame.  The people I thought loved me, would care for me, look out for me, take care of me, did not, while others came to my rescue in their place. I didn't dare scream for help while there because I knew no one would come.  They couldn't.  But now I am here, home again, and there is no place to hide.  I cannot hide in the cultural differences, accept that no one is calling, connecting, reaching out because the call is too expensive.  I cannot tell myself any longer that it's the job, the schedule, the pressure.  I had to accept that there because there was nothing to escape to.  There was nowhere to go.

There was a rumor that when John Lennon wrote the song Starting Over, he was referring to the "lost weekend" when he and Yoko Ono  lived apart and were trying to reconcile, reconnect, get back to each other.  I was so moved that adults wrote songs about love, caring, admitting mistakes, longing, desire.  I wanted that.  Hearing the song so much as a child, especially around the time that this artist was killed, stolen from his love,  I could not believe how that emptiness must have hurt.

When I fell in love with Didier, there was a magic in our connection that I still believe is there.  I love him, care for him, want to share with him in ways I think he has never been shared with and in ways he is terrified to open.  I have spent a great amount of my adult life on a quest to heal my childhood wounds.  The scars are so easy to find on me if one even dares or cares to look.  But his are so well hidden that I would not even know they were there if I had not spent so many years with him.  There is no way that he left Barbados unscathed.  I think he is too proud, maybe too much in denial to even acknowledge the wounds, how the experience hurt his pride, his ego, his sense of how important he is, I guess his ego.  He has retreated and he was never that open to begin with.  We never speak of our pain, our disillusionment, our disappointment.  We do not meet at a place where we know we at least have each other.  The truth is, I have the girls.  At least I have the girls.

We are starting over.  And though it is not from zero, it sure feels that way.  I don't recognize anything and yet it all looks the same.  Except for me.  I have no idea who this person is.  I am tiptoe-ing around myself, around saying what I want to say, what I want to do.  I am a teenager back in my room in New Jersey begging to be acknowledged and loved except this time, I have kids.  And to keep them from beating this same path, I have to shake this.  I have to start over so I can love me enough to love them.  And love me enough too to see that two years ago, I unpacked a house all by myself and find myself again alone in my new house with two sleeping girls, order and control, everything in its place.  Except...



(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.

(c) John Lennon, Just Like Starting Over