"What do I DO with all of this, Dan?" I asked my husband for what feels like the 4 billionth time.
"I don't mean to sound preachy, but...you need to write", he replied.
I didn't ask him what he thought I should write about, and he didn't supply any suggestions. He just said to write, and as soon as he said it, I knew he was right.
It has been a year since I resurrected this blog. A full year ago my life changed really drastically, and I moved without my children from Florida to Norman, Oklahoma to live with Dan. Think what you may or adopt as your own opinion things you may have heard, but it was definitely not by choice. It was absolutely out of necessity, like if I don't do this, I'm going to become homeless again and these limitations would no longer meet the criteria for staying at the shelter I had before.
It's been a year...a very long year. What a weird ride. I have grown a LOT as a person. I HAVE developed things within myself (with help) that have enabled me to become a way better parent, but as I have said before, things are not easier. A lot of them are actually more difficult than they were before, and I am just sort of confused about what exactly I'm supposed to do with all of it...so I'm doing what I know to do. I have opened up this machine, and I am pressing keys.
Have you ever found yourself to be completely and utterly lost, and you come to a fork in the road (like a literal fork on a literal road while you're on a trip) and it hits you that you have no GPS because you are out of range, and you have no idea whether you are supposed to go right or left? You just sit there trying to draw from your sense of direction and some memory of the last thing that looked sort of familiar, and then another car pulls up behind you forcing you to go one way or the other. You gingerly make the turn hoping there's a place nearby that will show you a sign for where you are or you will happen upon a cell tower that re-enables your GPS so you can get direction that way.
That's where I'm at. I'm at the weird fork thinking "Okay...I followed the map...I followed the rules for where this journey SAID it was going to take me, but something somewhere was either an inaccuracy supplied to me or my own errancy as a human has brought me here. At this point, it is completely impossible to determine which of those is actually true...impossible. All I know is that I am at a complete loss for what step I am supposed to take next. I have no strategy anymore. I'm just going to take a leap and try to overcome misinformation or inadequate information that has been supplied to me and rely on every resource I have right now to get on a more effective track."
Oh. I guess I should also mention that there are now FOUR people that are depending on me to get us all where we need to go. I'm not in the vehicle of my life by myself.
I'm positive I'm not the only person this has happened to, but these experiences have a very keen way of making us as humans feel incredibly isolated. I find myself to be alone at least until I can reach one of the above mentioned resources.
Would you like to know the other frustrating part? Over the course of this past year, I have found myself sitting at NUMEROUS forks. The one at which I now sit is NOT my first one. I'm beginning to feel like I mistakenly picked up the map that is for a totally different journey - someone else's or just a different destination altogether. I have found myself picking up my "map" a bunch of times re-reading the writing on the front to confirm that I chose the correct one and getting that confirmation each time only to continue finding myself at these dad-blasted weirdo forks!!!
I don't know, you guys. I don't know why this has been my life. This feels like the most cruelly circuitous route for something that looked at the outset to be a straight shot. I have no more explanation than I did since the FIRST fork as to why that has not been true...except for this...one...thing.
This trip has led me down roads that I never would have seen had my expectations of the straight shot been my reality. I have seen parts of the journey of life that would have been a total mystery to me had I been given the choice to avoid the loops and curves. It has also given my three already born little ones the ability to watch me navigate. Journeys are especially hard for navigators, and we ALL end up finding ourselves in the position of being the navigator at some point. They have watched me with rapt attention to see how I reacted to all of this craziness. Sometimes I have shouted out at incompetant fellow sojourners or mumbled under my breath at how arduous this task has been. I have fallen flat on my face...but there have been other times that the speed of the traffic around me has been so intense and dangerous or the landscape indescribably treacherous and I have narrowed my gaze, taken a deep breath and gotten us through to safety. They have watched all that too. They have seen things that they will tuck away into the boxes of their memories, and one day, while they are on their own journeys and THEIR GPS fails or THEIR maps don't make sense, they will simply open up that box and find the answer there. I know this to be true because there have been times on my journey that I have done the same thing. My parents' journeys seemed to have SOME parts that were simpler, so I haven't felt like I had materials for every single circumstance. I mean, that's really an impossibility anyway, but what if the complexity of my journey is just a greater help to all four little hearts later?
You know what too? I've covered a lot of ground in just shy of 34 years...a lot. I now have the ability to tell other people where this thing or that is located. There are parts of this journey that are so indelibly imprinted on my brain that, if someone seeks information about a path or a landmark, I will immediately be able to recall how to get there and what things surround it.
I have to be honest. There are times that I feel so very like Wesley on the rack in The Princess Bride. How FAR can we crank this sucker up? or How WEIRD can we possibly make this?
Whatever.
I guess I'm still holding on to that dream of being the little old lady that finally feels content with the amount of answers that I ended up with by the time my hair has totally greyed and my whole face crinkles when I smile instead of just my eyes.
Someone called me wise the other day. People call me strong all the time. I get so embarrassed when those comments come my way. My first impulse is to turn around to see the person behind me that they must be talking about because THIS lil mama feels more confused than anyone I know...but what if I represent those things to other people? What if I represent some semblance of safety and calm to just a few other people looking at their wacky maps too?
I'll take it.
This CAN'T all just be a big ol mistake (in fact, I don't truly believe it is. I just really hate feeling lost or ill prepared. It's very scary to me).
There is a problem with me analogizing life to a map, really. Maps are set pictures. We can immediately see the beginning to the end, and life is not like that at all. Rather we are sometimes given large portions of information for the next steps to take and sometimes we are only given a little bit. We are actually NEVER supplied with information regarding the entire journey.
So why do we allow ourselves to think of things in those terms? Do we not all do that to a degree? Or maybe life ends up being like a cumulative map rather than a completed page that we're given.
Either way...here I sit at the fork - biting the skin off my lip and hoping that opening my eyes a little wider makes them catch something that gives me a clue. In the mean time, I'm just going to take a breath and then look in the rearview mirror at the three sets of eyes that expect me to do well...and I'll do it.
