Another Life

I've been trying to write this post for a while. It's been hard to articulate. I have images and feelings. No music. No words.  

The offer came mid-May. 2023. I changed my mind eight times (at least) in one whole week. In the end, I felt ill. I called the offer-maker, accepted, then told my boss before I could change my mind.

Again.

Yes. I quit my job. I sold, donated, then tossed almost all my stuff -- including the new couch, hardly five months used. My car's load looked like sediment layers, my most cherished belongings stacked to geologic time. 

I promptly lost all sense of order.

And I'm still finding things... now... in weird places. It's like my car's alive, and angry, regurgitating an experience it had no control over. A pair of scissors show up in my trunk. Where'd those come from? Then I remember buying them on Amazon, in my before life. 

Before I left Jackson. Before I quit my job. Before I even bought that silly couch.   

The scissors are small. Artistic Imposter. A bird's beak for shears. Embroidery scissors. Such sweet Allegory. All the little threads I call my life. 

I'm not super old. But I'm really not young. And winter of 2023 a gnawing, clawing beast kept visiting my door. Especially at night. There I'd be, tucked in my little bed, my little apartment, with all my little possessions around me. 

Control. Such illusion, right? 

Daytime, I liked my job and my friends and my clothes. But come dark, I began to dread sleep. For I couldn't.

I'd think about that time in '83, leaving Kansas. I'd remember standing in that kitchen of that basement apartment, phone in hand, with the offer to stay. U of K was right there. Would I have studied art? Then?

Or how 'bout that time I was stationed in Germany. I took that course through the University of Maryland. I rode that bus to Heidelberg one night each week, climbed a bunch of stairs to an attic-like classroom, and there, in the company of others, I'd draw and paint.

Oh, and then there's that real-deal experience. Back in California, community college, ready to transfer, but I got scared. I couldn't summon the vision, the courage, the belief I wouldn't fail -- regret it all later. Mid-20s me only read black and white. I got married. I went to court reporting school. I had a child. I went on with life. 

I made money. I lost money.  

Eventually, in there, I'd finish what I'd started. But it came at a price. At 40 I was graduated, but divorced. I worked full-time in courtrooms. I repressed all my baggage. 

There were good things. 

And I was a good mom. 

I'm still making sense of my guilt. 

Why is the world so hard on women who want?

And why are we women so hard on ourselves?   

And so when the offer came that May '23, I knew I would take it. Even when I turned it down. Twice. In writing. I knew. I knew I was going to go. 

And so this chick and her car and all her little layers, both valid and moot, said No to affordable housing, drew down her savings, accepted a grant and went to the desert. For six months she lived in Roswell, New Mexico. For six months she drew and painted and entered art shows and applied to MFA and Fellowship programs. It was terrifying. It was intimidating.   

It was great.