Purpose and direction

Upon reflection, and there has been much of that lately, I think we should have stayed just one year in Barbados.  It's all water under the bridge now, but Didier and I both look at each other sometimes when we are talking to others about our time there, with a look that says, "*&;%$, did we really give it two years?"  The truth is neither of us gives up easily, on anything, which can make for some pretty intense stand-offs in the house, on the street, in the car, you get the idea, and giving up when the contract said two years just did not seem like an option.  But it was an option and we could have put it on the table.  We probably should have.


For myself, as I cannot speak for my husband and would not dare, I think I just didn't know what I wanted to do next, so there was nothing to commit too.  Because I was in a state of shock, cultural, emotional, spiritual, I don't think I could consider what I even wanted to do next, let alone what I would be willing to do, other than, of course, watching our children.  But it was watching our children, getting lost in that life, being unable (unwilling?) to scream out loud, that my sense of purpose, my direction came to me.


I want to write.  I want to tell stories.  I want to tell the truth about being a woman, a black woman, with a brain and a heart and a family, two crazy kids, and a totally hot but oftentimes clueless husband, reaching, trying, embracing, crying, laughing, doing a great job, and fucking up.  I want to admit, confess, wrench, scream, cry, giggle, tickle, tease, inspire, piss off.  I have been open to life, to experiences, and closed as tight as a clam shell in hurt and pain.  That's real life as I see it and I want to talk about it the way I talk to my friends, other artists and women and men and thinkers and readers and writers and seekers.


 For people who know me now, it may come as a shock that as a young person, a very young person, elementary school student, I was so shy and uncomfortable talking out loud to people I did not know well.  I studied dance and loved it because all the communicating could be done with my body, a line, a gesture, pantomime.  Classical ballets were so wonderful because the stories were relatively simple stories, motifs, and in between was the dance, the glorious dance, the movement, the energy.  I could and did get lost in it.  When I concentrated on the stories, the imagery, the dance, I could disappear and forget about my life, the loneliness, alienation, insecurities.


And then one day someone asked me, "What are you thinking about when you are dancing?  Who are you in there?  When you are portraying love, when you are crying, when you feel loss, who are you thinking about?"  I couldn't bear to say.  The narrative had always been running in my head; I did know the answers to all of those questions, but I thought I'd explode if I revealed them.  I entered a world of metaphor when I began painting.  I could be screaming with the paint, angry with a certain gesture, the push and pull of whatever medium appealed to me, begging for attention.  But what I meant, what I was saying, could be interpreted by the viewer however he or she wanted, and I could hide behind whatever they saw in the image.  I knew what I meant, but I did not have to say it or admit or confess. 

When acting, doing commercials and voiceovers, I was always someone else.  Even the "me" I was portraying was a composite of all the best of me.  It was the medium, I am not a fake, but no one was looking for the darks and the grays when they wanted to sell something.  It was sunshine, brights behind the eyes, a lift in the voice, a promise of a new day.  I loved it.  I believed it.  My husband still refers to me as an actress when I am animated, excited, pissed off, which surely takes me even higher, lost in the upper register and I am raspy voiced.  I don't always recognize myself.Going to Barbados helped me find my voice, helped me find something to say and for the first time, I was willing to say it out loud, scream it even, share, confess, admit.  I have been struggling through this thing called life, the big moments and the tiny, hysterical meltdowns on the floor, especially after trying to create and live up to an image of myself as a wife and mother that I could not possibly uphold and that does not ring true.  If I want to say something properly,  I have to write it down.   Writing it down keeps me from lying.  With my face.  To my face.  Prevents me from trying to save face. 

The stories in my life are real and I have rarely seen them portrayed in the movies, on television, in books.  There are questions and contradictions, two sides of a coin flipping at once.  There is crazy love and blinding rage in the same moment.  I love my family and wish they would leave me alone at the same time.  I am afraid of letting go and jumping into the abyss yet refuse to sit on my ass and watch the years, the opportunities, and dreams go by.  Confessional, but not reckless.  Truth-seeking but still protective.  I am working on peeling back the onion skin a little at a time, but you know it sticks.

I need to make the time.  Dare to go in the direction of my dreams (as has been postered, fridge-magneted, Hallmark carded into my eyes, but never into my heart).  Accept my role in the cosmos.  All of that while also making a home, a haven, a life for myself and my family.  There have been countless stories about the ball-busting executive, power woman who has given up that glory for dirty diapers, Mommy and Me's, and playdates.  But what about the creative woman, the artist, who feels the same pull in her core whether she creates a work of art, goes through the process of thinking, making, or doing, or makes a child, nurtures it, provides for it, loves it?

Now we begin.  Every day.


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