March 6, 2014

I’m putting myself out there by taking myself away.  When I used to blog often, I was single, and I was searching for ways to fill my time — work, friends, family, movies, events, travel — and after I got married and was fully immersed in graduate school, motherhood, work, etc., my time was no longer my own.  I’m not resentful — a number of very wonderful changes came to me through those experiences and demands.  However, a very vital and important part of me went dormant in the process as well.

Dormancy.  Curious word.  Curious concept.  A definition:  “having normal physical functions suspended or slowed down for a period of time; in or as if in a deep sleep, e.g. dormant butterflies.”

Fortunate for me, that example.

Dormant butterflies.

For if ever there were a worm-to-butterfly phase of life, this would be it.

A butterfly can just look back

Flap those wings, and say, ‘oh yeah,’

And never have to be a worm again.

A snake gets tired of being him,

He wriggles from that itchy skin,

Leaves it lying where he’s been

And moves on.

I am longing for something tangible.

Some kind of proof that there’s been change in me.

Feel like I’ve been waking up,

Only to fight with the same old stuff.

Change is slow, and it fills me with such doubt.

C’mon, new skin, where’ve you been?

Help me wriggle from this self I’m in,

And leave it like a skin upon the ground.

–Sara Groves, “Like A Skin”

Ironic that the lyrics of this particular songwriter come to me now – she wrote several of the songs that were performed in our wedding.  Almost six years ago.  Six years ago when I stood, all dolled up, in front of 250 of our closest friends and family members and said that sentence that I insisted on writing into our vows, “I will not divorce you.”  I did not know, at the time, what lay ahead of me.

March 17, 2015

Just came across this post that I began writing LAST year in March, and I never published it.  It feels very odd to be slogging through the week that contains my first non-anniversary date, March 20th.  (Cursor blinking aggressively at me while I am not typing whatever the next sentence may be).  Perhaps that is all I need to say.  Just let last year’s words speak for themselves.

And be grateful for metamorphosis.