It is 3:03 a.m. and I should be asleep. The good news is that I wasn't already up brooding, the bad news is that after Nahanni woke me up at 1:30 I started in earnest.
It's so hard to say whether all this is just a temporary part of being a mother of a small child or if I am falling apart altogether. I just cannot seem to get a good grip on things again, I've been spinning my wheels... The house is always a barometer of my mood. I go in streaks (I have previously admitted to a severe lack of housekeeping talent) and once or twice a year it really all falls to sh*t and who knows what came first the chicken or the cracked little egg, but my black mood matches the state of my house.
The tornado is back.
Actually, it's less a tornado and more like a vacuum, an absence. Every once in a while I just can't be bothered to try anymore in the whole game. I get tired of trying to stay ahead of laundry and the ever-present pile of dishes and clothes and filing. I get tired of going to auditions where the director is clapping before I'm even done and I still don't get it. I get tired of staring down all the ways in which I have disappointed myself and I just let it go. I remember what my bedroom carpet looks like; I just haven't seen it for a while. I know what clear counter tops and shiny floors look like, I just don't care to put forth the energy lately. I feel worn out. Funnily enough though, I'm not really tired. And I certainly am not tired of Nahanni, I just...
Like all of us (I must believe) I have regrets. I made choices that served me and choices that didn't and the lines are not always clearly cut, but the pain and the questioning certainly cuts deep regardless. I feel like I looked away and somehow lost the thread of my real life, the life I had imagined and worked so hard to manifest.
Obviously I have had some great successes, the most obvious one sleeping now above my head, her hair tousled, her small footed pyjamas warming her against the night chill. I have obviously succeeded well in her. She is smart and funny and polite and darling. I got a chart from the library recently that outlined stages of development and for her age group she is meant to do things like 'use 10 words' which made me laugh out loud. You mean in one sentence? She knows almost her whole alphabet and she makes amazing leaps in cognitive thinking and has almost no issues with verb conjugation, which is surprising even to me. I try to teach her all day long, for I know that everything is new and there is much to learn. She pages through our cookbooks and calls out the foods. She sat for over half and hour today reading the 'Memories of Philippine Kitchens' cookbook ['Phulippines! Phulippines - go live there!' {yes, that's actually what she said}] and called out 'Dragon Fruit! Mangoes! Shrimp!' - all things I had named for her only once while we shuffled through it the day before. Her new favourite things to say are 'Excuse me' and 'Thank you Mummy' and I give her things just to hear her say that. I have every hope that I will fail as rarely as possible in raising her and will not pass on my most glaring faults to her.
So there is not doubt that I am proud to be succeeding in what is, without cloying sentimentality, honestly the most rewarding and important job I'll ever have, but still, I wonder what happened to the pieces of myself that I used to be proud of? Yes, I have been a professional actor for well over a decade, have garnered awards and have begun to teach and to succeed in voice work and I've written things and...but where is the fire? Really!? What the hell happened to the person I once was? Is this just that time in life, or have I lost the plan?
I've wandered around in a dark mood for days, wrestling with this demon who never leaves my back, only lives more quietly at times than others. Lately he has blackened my eyes and my heart and is poisoning me against myself. I think my saving grace, even as it has 'interrupted' my previously prolific plans, is motherhood. I remember that how I act and speak and measure my life will be learned very early by my daughter and I must take care in that, for I have no intention of letting said demon take hold of my child. Yes, she will have her own demons eventually, I know, but still, I refuse to lend her mine. And all is not lost, I'm sure [although really, SAG? Are you serious - another strike? Are you not aware of how truly expendable we are!?] and I think perhaps I am hitting a certain creative bottom from which I must rise and rebuild.
I have always had trouble separating my worth from my work. I struggle to shut off the voices of those I perceive to be watching and judging (a vanity in and of itself, really) and to listen to my own voice, which has of late been dampened by circumstance and the general wearing down of life. I think I suffer when I am not being creative, and yet I don't know how to make time for myself anymore, how to begin to rebuild the woman I set out to be. I am not too ashamed to admit that I am feeling not a little beaten down by it lately, and I know this is that point in life when you can let it beat you or you can get up and brush off and fight back and begin again to create the life you imagine. I am learning that if I don't carve out the time it will simply disappear and become 'the time when I should have..' and all that. I used to be so smart, Now I have absolutely no answers at all.
However, I am smart enough to be paying attention to the real things. Nahanni has been waking at night for several nights, which is unusual. It would be easy to zombie my way into her room, sleepwalk through putting her back down. But tonight I sat fully awake with her in my arms. She lay her head on my shoulder, her legs wound around my middle like when we used to nurse, her small hand lightly brushing at the newly shorn hair at the nape of my neck. I drank it in, the very feel of her in my arms, the smell of her hair, the sound of her breathing in my ear, her little sighs. At one point, just when I thought she was asleep my mind, awake and fitful beginning to wander to all of this and she pulled back to look at me in the night glow of her room, she nodded her tousled curls and gave me the kiss of a fairy, right on my lips. She lay her head back onto my shoulder and fell asleep and in that moment at least, all was right in my world.
Right now she doesn't care what I do, who I am separately from her. Perhaps she is right and I shouldn't either. A wise little nod, I think. She is, afterall, a super-genius.
No comments:
Post a Comment