Dream to Elysium

I am in my apartment in Atlanta…a deep bathtub of hot water, lavender oil and bubbles, surrounded by candles, a sheer white curtain separating me from the outside world, Enya playing softly, glass of wine in hand. I am relaxed. I am thinking, missing someone, feeling alone, but determined to keep plugging along. In the sadness, loneliness, I am inspired. Later this night, I will write away the sadness until it is laid out in front of me in words, in a beautiful story that I will love and cherish, one that will hopefully mean something to whomever reads it. I will take the sadness and turn it into a memory that I will carry with me, use it as a way to face the deep, dark places I otherwise wouldn’t face, use it to move forward, use it to be stronger.

It has been said that a troubled soul and a life of struggle makes a great and passionate artist.  According to a personal favorite, Helen Keller, "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."  I agree with her…in my most difficult times, I have learned the most, gained the most, grown the most, witten my best.  Maybe that makes me an artist, maybe it simply makes me human.  Tonight I am searching for that inspiration, for the artist within, only I am finding it much harder to reach. My thoughts are consumed with tasks, hours consumed with what needs to be done to make days easier, making my family happy and functional. My hours and thoughts are not my own. I don’t have the time to own them, feel them, move in and out of them freely. I am tired and uninspired. And I can feel the ache of needing to release, needing the freedom I find in writing.

Tonight I am outside, computer in hand, braving the freeze, and with Enya as my company, I am trying to reach the faraway place where I store the pieces of me that are tucked behind tasks and to-do lists. And this is where I get stuck… Maybe it’s because I’m intimidated by you, this audience of mine, afraid of what I may say, who I may affect by saying it, whether it will mean anything at all by saying it, whether it will make a good story. Maybe I've gotten comfortable in not thinking, lazily going through the motions without taking the time to exercise my mind. I don’t want to purchase return tickets for the troubled artist in me, but I wish I could fly my inspiration back home.

When I start to write, I think about current events, changes and craziness in the world, things here in our daily life, but before I know how to give those thoughts a voice, the moment has passed and the event seems trivial. I can’t shake the feeling that what is going inside me isn’t trivial…it’s real and I’m struggling to face it. Something is missing…not within my marriage or with me as a mother, but with me. Something is missing within me. It’s as if a dream within me has died somehow.

For as long as I can remember, I had a dream of what I would be, who I would become, what I would do, and how I would change the world around me. I dreamed of affecting people, helping people, making a difference. I wanted to be influential, important…I wanted to do, create, be something special. I wanted to be somebody. Not sure why that just struck a nerve with me, but I felt the tears creeping up. I don’t feel important. I am a mother, so my feelings and actions affect Baby C. When my husband returns home, those things affect him. But, I don’t feel important. My husband and son love me dearly, and I know that. This isn’t about them. And it’s not about a job. It’s about the fact that I am feeling my age. It’s as if a big milestone has passed by me and I was too busy looking the other way to notice. There’s a real sense of loss in recognizing how little I am able to give to myself to feel important, in how much I have changed. I can’t chase any more of the wild dreams I once wanted, can’t take the hours to figure out my life the way I once could. I can’t really be that much of a dreamer or thinker at all anymore. I have to be present and practical and dependable. I have to be a good wife and mother. I can’t find enough hours in the day to achieve all of it, so the impulsive, spontaneous dreamer in me has to be tucked deep down into storage.

When my husband and son are sleeping, I start to realize that outside our cocoon, there’s not much or many I am affecting “out there”. Afterall, most of my days are spent alone. My family is moving on with their lives, so much so that the life I dreamt I’d have to go home to looks drastically different. I have felt the impact from here, but I can’t be there to be a part of the change. Even if I were, I would still have to face that I am not important to someone who I thought really cared for me. I have suffered a loss from a distance – a loss I didn’t expect to have – and it weighs heavily on me every moment of the day. The building of that relationship brought down long-held walls for me years ago, but I can feel their boundaries up again. My friends have moved on with their lives and, despite our best efforts, the phone calls and emails are few, mostly consisting of barely catching up. I know if I need them, my sounding boards, my closest girls, would be there, but it feels impossible to get it all out in one, expensive phone call.

I don’t regret my choices…this isn’t regret, it’s loss. I am grieving the loss of a me I hadn’t fully learned to love or recognize. I am grieving the loss of choices I hoped to make that I don’t see any sight of making in the future. I am grieving the loss of freedom to make those choices again. I am grieving the loss of relationships that were important to me. I am grieving the loss of time. Time goes by so quickly and I just want to catch hold of it, capture it, save it, throw it back into the future…all this, without living in or reliving the past. I want my husband and my son…I want our journey together. But I want a journey of my own, outside of who I am as a wife and mother, and that seems less tangible now. I have no idea where I will go next, what path I can choose, what dreams I can chase. I am feeling loss and lost. Despite everything I have worked so hard to accomplish, both personally and professionally, I no longer see myself as important or recognized. So I hold back. I take care of my son and my husband and my mother and I hold back, hold it in. I wait for the moments when it is ok to step outside the cocoon and take a look at the choices.

It feels a bit shameful to question so much when I have so much. This isn’t a lack of being grateful.  And it isn't a lack of happiness in what I - we - have built. It’s me, looking back at that great woman who once inspired me, the woman who said “I long to achieve great and noble tasks, but my responsibility is to achieve small tasks in a great and noble way,” and thinking, what if the small tasks aren’t enough? How do you stop the longing?