Hi. It's me. 5 years later.
I am a different woman from the one who wrote last. I am indeed a woman and certainly a girl no more. For one thing, I am a wife. I am also a mother. I have learned to identify myself as such. Still, lately I have a strange yearning- a wistfulness if you will, to be neither. This is not all of the time, I mostly love my life, my family, and my choices, but a strange thing happened the other day. I listened to some music from my past, and I felt those old feelings. I knew again in an instant what it was to be trapped, powerless, free, lonely, unsure, hopeful, insecure, and young, oh so young. I got this strange pang in my chest. Later, I brushed it away. I swept it up and put it in the garbage. No one saw me go back and pull it out later. Now, here I am. I am wondering about this feeling and what it means. I am wondering what I am supposed to do with it. It makes me want to be me. It talks to me. It whispers strange ideas and questions in my ear. "You are still you. You are not dead yet. Would you like to go live your life? Are you feeling the wanderlust? Can you quelch it with a husband and baby?" I don't know the answer to this. When the baby is asleep, sometimes I feel like the old me again. I feel like I am not just someone's mama, her mama, but a kid at the beginning of it all. I'll be honest. It frightens me a little to know that I have made some of those decisions I once looked at with awe, dread, and anticipation all mixed up together. Sometimes I want my body to be something that is just mine- not an impetus or food source. I just want to feel small and sexy again. Sometimes I want my husband to be my boyfriend, and sometimes I just want to be alone in a white gingerbread cottage with pretty tea things and a typewriter. Is this what made my mother run away from us?