On Not Being Special

Another layer of grief. I cannot be all that I wanted to be. I wanted to be endlessly creative, a font of love and creativity and beauty and energy. But here’s the truth. It takes lots of energy just to take care of my mental and physical health. And to be with my son and my marriage. I want to expand my local community and strengthen ties to my sisters and mother and nieces and nephews.

I don’t want to volunteer or get a job. I want to write. I want to put down on paper what matters to me, what I find beautiful and true. This is what I want to give-- not only to my son and family, but to the world. This self, this bundle of timidity and failure and yearning and ecstasy.

I wish to jettison the parts of me that steal time from the creative work. But they keep me grounded in my humanity, the desperate difficulty of trying to become anything other than what my DNA and life experiences have made of me.