01/08/08 – Dormancy
Sorry this blog has seemed to have been dormant for so long but I wasn’t sure there was a need for it anymore. I wasn’t sure I had anything to say. Things are moving along, they are fine, they are not fine, depending on the day.
It was easy to write this blog when life was tumultuous and exciting and scary and full of discovery. It was easy to write about how hard it was and the struggles and the successes. It was easy to write about heartbreak and depression and films and moving on.
What’s hard to write about is the life that is now. The daily existence, the boring details of a life that is being lived.
But that is the success of my life – the life that is being lived.
The first year of living this new life was a year of just being, trying to let go of the life I was walking away from, trying to not look back and wonder if I did the right thing, bounding into the playground with the few friends that followed me from that life – my dearest Zadra and my dearest Chairman. They are the ones who put their hands out and said, “Hey, it’s okay, we’re here to help you.” I leapt into that first year like a baby, stumbling and struggling and trying to figure out how to just get through the day. And I survived.
The second year of this new life was the hardest. It was discovering that I didn’t really know who I was, despite putting on a valiant face and trying to pretend that I was just what everyone told me I was – strong, powerful, smart, creative. They saw my vulnerability and began to show me that it was okay to be vulnerable. But that vulnerability took over my life for a short time. It turned into a desire to have someone in my life who would let me fail and be vulnerable and made me try to force a relationship that was not ready to be had. My head thought we were ready for something but my heart was not there yet. And, in the end, it cost me one of my most valued relationships because I couldn’t get a hold of my emotions and I became what my ex had told me all along that I was – emotional, inconsistent, weak and dependent. I didn’t know who I really was and I was looking for someone to define me. In the end, it cost me a huge piece of my heart.
The first two years of my new life held a desperation, a feeling that there was some invisible clock ticking that meant I had to figure it all out before you all figured out that I didn’t have it figured out. I thought I had to be “fine” by some calendar date otherwise I was a failure at this new life and I would let everyone down. I was afraid because so many women seemed to look at me as a role model, as someone who had gotten out and succeeded. I felt like a liar and failure and a fraud.
These past six months, which makes up half of my third year into this adventure, have begun to find a routine, a balance to my life, which is allowing me to really, truly just be. To have the time to learn it’s okay to not know who I am and what I want. I no longer hear the ticking clock. It is my time now, whatever that means.
I think what this blog needs to turn into is the story of a life – an every day life of a woman who started over, just like you can. It is a story no longer filled with constant discovery but still rich with that discovery, when it happens. It is a story of a woman who has lived and learned so much in a mere 30 months that it is still astounding sometimes that it has only been that long. It is a story of a woman who has found what we all seek – a life on her own terms.
The success of my life is the recovery of that life. The simple redundancy that my life is becoming is a success in and of itself. Discovering that routine is good and that there is a dawning knowledge of the future, not as a concept that has no shape because there is no one to plan it with (or criticize it as wrong), but as a true and clear destination that is going to lead somewhere. It is a life that has a schedule – 10 art classes a week at Mission Renaissance, writing twice a week with Madame H and Ranger Smith, yoga twice a week (when I can convince myself that it’s good for me) – and it has a plan – Carmel maybe for my birthday, the lab show at the Ark in March, finishing Cinderella and shooting “The Wraith” – and it has stability, for the first time in almost four years, since before my marriage began its end.
The celebration of the midlife is that there is no crisis anymore. There is no urgency to find a life and figure out all the questions and answers and tap-dance my way around what I don’t know. The celebration of the midlife is that – it is mid-life. I have lived half of it, learning much, hurting much, leaving much behind. But there is still that other half in front of me that doesn’t need to be figured out today, that will be there when I arrive tomorrow, and it is there to be shaped and discovered, not fretted over and manipulated to fit some twisted idea I have about what that future should be. I’m finally at a place where I think I can let the future unfold and take me along with it. I’m planning for my future – film shoots, shows at the Ark, vacations, etc. – but I’m also willing now to just follow along where it leads. It’s led me some wondrous places so far and I cannot wait to see where it leads me next.
So I’m going to try to chronicle the life I am leading, let you know that the success of this life is in the living of it, as simple and mundane as that is. It sure beats the hell out of where I started in June, 2005 and I cannot wait to see where I am in June, 2015. Or 2025.
I hope to see you there with me.
