Pieces of Me

I'm feeling fragmented, like there are only pieces of me, not a whole. In many ways I am feeling like I traded in parts of myself to get her. I would not trade her for anything but I do still want to be myself, to find myself again. I don't quite know what to do, where to be, how to be.

I find myself wandering through my days lately, not sure how to move forward. Part of this is a result of the inertia I so despise in the winter months, part of it is the result of being home, of the isolation that can come with being a mother, with having to be home for naptimes and even the merest of routine. And part of it is this sense that I do not know how to proceed anymore. When I was in the mad throes of ambition I feel like I knew how to move (although in retrospect, I clearly misjudged many things...but again, that's another blog) and that drove me through my days. But now, I'm in a different stage of my career, my daughter is my bigger priority, there is a strike; it's like running on a treadmill - and anyone who knows me knows how much I hate that, literally and figuratively. It is as though I don't know how to structure my life anymore since I don't have a driving force like ambition to lead me. I find myself feeling like I can't get something done because I don't know how long she will nap, for example. I pull out my research for publishing my children's book and I can't quite concentrate enough to make sense of it. So much of my life has been truncated; my sleep, my eating, my writing - and it is as though I no longer know how to do anything that requires any lengthy amount of concentration. I wonder when I will ever be able to finish the book I began writing before she was born - I know what happens (mostly) but when can I really focus on it enough to do it well? Sure, I could sit down and write all day, ignoring her little tugs at my pant legs, but then what would be the cost? I suppose that is the real test now that I am a mother, balancing her needs with mine. But at what cost to me is what I am wondering right now.

I find myself trawling through the internet sites for things like an MFA in Creative Writing, an MA in Journalism, Yoga Teacher Training -- and I just cannot see how I could make it work. Granted, I have always been better at 'no' than 'yes', but really - two years of full-time school (and the costs and pressures therein) - that would also mean not working as an actor, the job that has supported me, usually very well, for more than a decade. And it is what I love doing, really, but it isn't enough anymore. I don't think there are the opportunities that there used to be in general and especially in this climate of strikes, high Canadian dollar...and my decision not to move to LA at this point. Furthermore, I need more creatively. Sometimes when I read scripts I feel a wave of depression wash over me, a certain creative despair. I love to write, to feel words fling themselves from my mind to my fingers. I love to challenge of trying to mold and shape these thoughts in an effort to convey the experience of them - it makes me feel a small measure of control. I need to find something, somewhere to pour the pieces of me that I have worked on and saved up and that I think are worth something. Obviously I feel that the piece of me that is a mother is of extreme value, it gives me light and joy unlike any of the fleeting things I have enjoyed from my career - but at the same time, I worry that if I lose track of myself I will not be able to recover the woman I worked so hard to become. I have always needed something in my life to move towards, goals to achieve, accomplishments to be proud of. And, while I am immensely proud of Nahanni and of being a mother, I wonder what there is for me to be proud of outside that? Where are those missing pieces of me and how do I set them back together and find who I will be in the coming years?

I have no pithy conclusion to this, it isn't even terribly coherent, but it's apiece or two of me, mysterious little pictures cut off from the whole. I know if I keep gathering them I will eventually manage to create the picture. I don't know what it will be, that picture, but I sure hope it will be beautiful.