I should have continued on with my last post, because it seems I wasn’t finished. Which I knew, but over 1,000 words and I start thinking “I’d better wrap this up”. Plus it was getting late.
I let my sister know I was posting the last post, because I didn’t want her to come across it by accident. Just in case. We weren’t raised together - she was adopted, and both she and her mother expressed support and love when they read that infamous blort on my escutcheon*. Which I wasn’t really expecting. Colour me bemused (which I think is a kind of teal blue with possible hints of purple-to-red).
* I don’t think it is a blort on anyone’s escutcheon, but given that I usually aim silly, it was an eye-opener. A blort is not quite a blot, in case you’re wondering.
I wrote it because of the articles on Peaches Geldof, true enough, but also a way of clearing my deck. I write best when I’m telling the truth (or as near to it as I can get, since my perceptions are a series of contingencies, with every apparent shade of grey). I feel like my past, the early part, is a neon sign over my head anyway, so what difference does it make if I tell people? Husbandly was a little less sanguine about it, because it’s private. He’s right on that, but he’s also wrong. If it’s out there, it’s out there. I don’t have to worry about it.
I tried for a while not telling anyone I knew. It’s my story and I can do what I like with it. Fair enough, but sometimes there are confusions when trying to explain my sister, foster “family” and how I had two mothers. Maybe I’m not as good at exposition as I think. And I’d worry about what “the truth” meant in someone else’s head.
I worked for someone I wouldn’t have trusted as far as I could throw her (which wouldn’t have been far, the big fat cow), who I was afraid would make this thing into a big deal. Would believe that my beginnings meant that I was untrustworthy, a sneak, a dead loss. Epithets aside, I might have been doing her a disservice, but too late now.
So, I didn’t tell people. But after all this time, it doesn’t feel as if it matters anymore. I have some bad days here and there, and I’m scared green that writing will bring some memories up to the surface. But meh, enough. It was something that loomed so large when I was younger, that it seemed to define me.
I look around the internet and there are lots of stories like mine, lots of people who we interact with as they tell a story like this, but often we never see or hear from them again. So sometimes, yes, that big problem or thing or set of issues can be definitional, and now I am regretting not putting all of this into my last post. Damn. Splinter.
I’m not anything special, or at least no more so than the next person. Sure I have something, but everyone has something. Every single person. So my thing might be big for me and something my opinion of, my feelings about, my handling of may change until the day I die, but it’s…like a birthmark. That itches.
I’m important to the people who are important to me, I’m loved and I love. That’ll do, space cadets, that’ll do.
I read an article about process and purpose. My foster mother made a big deal out of purpose, that you should live to find yours, but I don’t know whether she achieved hers either. But in my case, according to her, it was to not turn out like Mum. At least. Which is harsh, and reductionist. I’m a bit harsh when it comes to my foster mother - now a mother myself, I haven’t done and won’t do some of the things she did to me to make me a functional human being. That she managed that, credit where credit is due, is a tribute to her, but wowsers, negative reinforcement is a pretty crappy way to go.
The funny thing is, I think in terms of what I’m not, rather than what I am. I’m not mean, not horrible, not awful, not dumb. Writing all of this out has made me realise that I think of life as a moment-by-moment balance, where you try to do more of the right things than the wrong. Maybe I undervalue some of the nice things I pull off - at least to people looking on - but…it’s a team thing. I’m me, and there isn’t anyone else like me - but I’m part of a family, a group of friends, a society (if you like), and what I want is for my balance to come out right. Or write. Ba-doom tish. The one thing I do think of as something I have rather than something I’m not is the engine I have in my head. I think it’s for writing. So here I am.
If that’s my purpose, yeah righteo. I think it might be process. I don’t think you find out your purpose until you die, if then. If your work means you do something that fulfils you, then maybe that’s your purpose, but that seems very small to me. I’m not just at work, or at home, or making jokes with random strangers (which I do a lot); I’m all of those things put together. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, because I damn sure can’t see everything about myself, or the results of how I interact with the world. I’m content to wait, and maybe I’ll find out, maybe I won’t.
For anyone who read the last one, and this one, aside from having a few moments of thinking “crap! It IS out there now!”, I hit a fragile peace around two minutes before posting it, and it’s lasted. I’ve been at home for the last two days, so maybe I’ll get wound up (again) going into work, but meh. Enough.
Love and peace, peeps.
