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In a new form of personal freedom, if you will, I have found that, having the ability to come and go and do as I please is not synonymous with knowing exactly HOW to come and go and do as I please. This realization came to me first when I discovered that my children were waaaay too "busy..." or old, if I'm being honest, to join me for dinners at home or even shopping trips to the mall. They, in fact, had their very own plans with their very own friends, and thus, no time to waste haggling on curfews, which sweater to borrow or who stole the deodorant from the bathroom cabinet. Everything was relegated to text messages and absentee rule breaking. In those moments of the all-too-familiar back and forth referee-ing, lectures on life and table manners, however. I found myself fading off and wishing I were walking somewhere in TriBeCa, tripping on the Cobblestone in my 4"inch Steve Madden wedges in my haste to make it to an exciting gallery event of some sort. Yet, when I am home, alone and all is quiet, serene and dead boring, my stubborn feet refuse shoes, refuse to walk anywhere except to the inside of my cozy sheets as they rub together to get warm after a chilly bathroom break. My welcomed breaks came only when my spouse worked late, or on certain weekends, where I would bask in the luxury of Netflix binge-watching and ice cream scooping my way into a lazy evening of cereal dinners and midnight showers and discovering new music on iTunes. Hours upon hours of reading, photo editing, and giggling at Gordon Ramseys yelling insults to his next best chef or whatever was cooking....
Now, recently separated, with no elaborate dinners to cook, no holiday hosting disasters to avoid, no fights to make up for, I am left with endless amounts of time for myself (insert "the scream" inspired emoji here). What do I do? Where do I go? Who do I do it with? Literally and figuratively...lol. I have been reluctantly thrust into the reality of being exactly where I had fantasized about for, ummm, 25 years now or so, and it is terrorizing me into a frenzy. Never the social butterfly, I have always known and recently learned to appreciate my distinctively "different" personality stems from my artistically-inclined need to be alone. My time of creating, whether it was writing a poem at 3 am, recording vocals or now more prominent passion-photography, has always been my private little paradise. A little secret I would hoard like candy bunched in my pulled up skirt, I would only share a few of the good ones. My stash would usually be kept in neat little folders for my very own viewing or reading pleasure. Until now. Suddenly, the barriers of the motherly/wifely duties I set upon myself, which I allowed to keep me bottled up within me, have lifted. New questions have formed. How can I share? With whom? How do I get more involved, immersed....engulfed in all things ART in all its vast many forms? Its starting to pour out of me like a sieve and I want it to rain down as I simultaneously soak it in. An endless cycle of love, life and reinvention begins...tears and angst turns into revelations and (some) secrets spilled...maybe I'll splash around the puddle barefoot and do a little jig!
