Between Selves

Like one little ember breathing the life of fire into thick layers of dry leaves, heating nest into flame, then flame into fire so is this depression within me. A dull yet smoldering sense of discontentment sits as dark clouds about mountain peaks, heavy and threatening. Everything is automatic; a suffocating familiarity snuffs out the smallest of joys.

Pulling myself off the cold flat bed as they rouse, I potty her, change him, and send them to a show. I cook, cut and serve, cleaning and wiping, and cleaning and wiping. I empty and fill, empty and fill the dishwasher. I launder and fold the clothes, return them to drawers, recover them from floors to launder and fold, return, recover, launder and fold. I am their merry pole as they lay claim to my person dancing about me, climbing atop me; they bicker over my lap and snuggle up against me, regardless of my desperate need for space and autonomy. I intervene as if caught in a looping routine in their quarrels on the days wherein the mere life of the other offends them and I repetitively interrupt their clever machinations on days wherein they are thick as thieves. Be consistent, be consistent, be consistent … I am consistent though the consistency strangles me. “No hitting, off the table, don’t push, down from the eves … it’s time out and yes, I heard you … all thirty seven times … about the god-forsaken juice.”

Daddy’s offer to let me out of my cage for an hour or so each night is not enough to bring about a self I recognize: limp hair, dry skin, and thin grey eyes on empty and overdrive is the she who stares back at me. I miss the old me, the me golden from sun kissed hikes deep into the hills. That was the me, giddy on whimsy, feeding solely on my heart’s desires; that she who was me took to flight and soared. She was so bold in her cheer and fresh eye. Kind and vast with her down to earth wisdoms about transcendence, she was, in retrospect, so sweetly blind in her world wherein there lived the space for enlightenment. She would tell the me of today that my life is the result of the choices I’ve made. Powerful in her freedom, she would reveal, as if it were the magic ticket, that I have the power to reconstruct my life by drawing better boundaries and maintaining better balance.