Putting The Pieces of a Life Together
and learning to listen to the right voices
I’ve been considering often, as I move through my life these days, what is mine to tell and what is not. What is - what word should I use here - productive to share from my life’s archives and what is not. What will be seen as petty, and what will be seen as useful for pulling the curtain back? I don’t have the answers. Mostly, I’ve been using the compass of the question: what is clawing to get out of me?
Life comes at you fast, is what I think to myself often while I am scrubbing my dishes at night, always processing internally while I do housework - the endless housework that for one person to accomplish while trying to work full time seems to take up all of my spare time and energy. I work while I make the kids breakfast, while they tell me their stories, while I take a break from shooting hoops with my son to order more shipping materials quickly on my phone. I move the puzzle pieces around in my head: what will I be doing with the kids tomorrow and how will I integrate work time for myself? I think of the next day, the next week, the next month. I ask myself what my long term plan is to support my family when the spousal support runs out. I remind myself for the millionth time that I am making progress, that I have to focus on one foot in front of the other, that I quite simply cannot afford to spiral.
Inevitably, my mind gets ruffled, because I am always thinking about the path that led me here, in my kitchen, pondering how I can make things work in this house until I am ready to make a move. I graduated at the top of my class, twice. I know my capabilities, and they are many. But I have spent the last decade of my life pouring fully into everyone’s success and using whatever is left on myself, and here I am, quietly puzzling finances and childcare costs and work hours to myself on too little sleep and too much caffeine. Without my consent, my brain puts on a ticker tape parade of unhelpful and dismissive takes I’ve heard. They fly around my mind like confetti: