For many years I walked a straight and narrow path, more out of fear than righteousness. I was a being of propriety at the expense of the soul that cowered within. On many occasions I would obligingly conform even when the child inside screamed in opposition. Throughout childhood and into the early adult years I practiced this form of personal denial, convincing myself that any expression beyond the expected decorum was not only ill advised, but some shameful act of willful insurgence against both my faith and my upbringing. To doubt or question those would be certain blasphemy.
Not until the college years when I astonishingly witnessed so many frivolities and experimental liberties taken by those around me did I begin to give serious attention to the pinings I felt inside. Although I gave them no influence, I began to ponder them internally, reconsidering many lifelong messages and allowing some of them to find face in the discovery of the inner voice.
Instead of becoming angry or declaring oppression, I merely retreated to the comfort of the well known paths I’d already traveled. I returned home and completed my educational pursuits from the sanctity of the anticipated course my life would take; marriage, homemaking, and family.
While I found accomplishment and a sense of purpose; the inner inclinations that I was more than the sum of my sought after recipes and PTA titles came at me like waves; sometimes softly licking the ankles, and at other times knocking me on my ass for days at a time while I processed the feelings and carefully tucked away any thought or activity that would jeopardize the safe haven my world had become.
There came a time in my life when I realized a happy me made a better wife and mother, however, the pursuits of such definition were not so acceptable to those that before had benefited from the full time sacrificial being who had facilitated them previously. Thus began many years of swerving back and forth in the journey of balancing obligation with individuality; of pleasing and service with self reliance and liberation.
Ok, enough of the pity. Really, I don’t need anyone to commiserate with me on an existence of abdicating my self expression and choosing numbing social acceptance over following the urgings of the heart. Granted I had a structured and sterile childhood, but there was love there and security in an odd way. No one gets through life unscathed, and the choices I made were the ones I thought best and appropriate at the time.
No words can paint an accurate picture of the past, as it is tainted with perspective. It was what it was, and I make no claims of culpability. Whether it is the choices stationed upon a minor me by a parental figure, or choices I made as an adult to blindly accept religious based mores; my life is my choosing and I will place no blame outside myself, whether I be on a path of correctness or discovery.
Despite this rather public forum for broadcasting personal thoughts and occurrences in my life, I’m surprisingly reserved and private in actuality. Those of you who read my lexis are given only partial glimpses into the world I want you to see; each word is tasted carefully before allowing it to waft for eternity into cyberspace.
When given the infinity of boxes into which a person can be placed, even well meaning terms become stereotypical labels that create an incomplete picture of the person I am within. Words and titles given or earned over a lifetime pale in comparison to the living breathing individual ever evolving inside. All these names have defined me on a one dimensional level during one time or another in my life:
Darling daughter, only child, oldest grandchild, role model, perfect attendee, gifted student, latchkey kid, chubby, good girl, leadership material, honor student, poor, safe sitter, Christian, band geek, looser, capable, rebellious teen, peer counselor, prep, best friend, naïve, drama queen, scholastic achiever, tease, idealist, perfectionist, passivist, naturalist, valued employee, valued customer, girlfriend, fiancé, bride, wife, foster mother, college graduate, expectant mother, brave, strong, Mommy, loopy friend, disappointing, insatiable, discontent, wanderer, Aunt, angel, glutton, goddess, Libra, lover, mono, poly, straight, bi, bitch.
I do not claim perfection or sainthood, nor do I want outside assessments. Such terms give limited perspective and are generally focused on external parameters. But who can know the heart, and under what circumstances can one examine the reasons of another?
So, draw your own conclusions, make judgments about who you think I am, and lay accusations at my feet. To those so inclined to evaluate my life, you may critique my actions, but I bid you reserve verdict on my intentions and motivations. If I do not yet know myself fully, how can you ever begin to overcome the egocentristic nature of all humans and label me correctly? For I am undefinable, I am merely ME.
~the laundry goddess, March 30, 2008
“Hypocrisy is judging the judgmental,
Blaming those who blame,
Throwing stones at those who throw stones,
And thinking somehow that it’s not the same.”
~Lindsey Archer
