I'm just trying to get to my 600th post as fast as I can, because that would seem like an achievement. I've passed that number already if you also count my posts on Wordpress, but since I'm unable to import those, I've had to start all over again. No matter. It's like beginning to write a new novel. You finish one and start the next and somewhere you leave the evidence that you were there behind you. It's like the different phases in your life that you leave behind you when you're done with them. How many memories of them do you want? I want very few. I only want the answers to whatever questions it turned out I had. Even if that is after the fact. I'm constantly trying to not live in my past, but to only live in the moment and in a very tiny little piece of the future. The only times I live in my past is in my dreams where I symbolically rehash all the things that happened to me in my past lives and come to some sort of a conclusion about what really took place then. I'm like an actress who is learning her lines after the final curtain. Or like Sherlock Holmes who is piecing together the picture after the wicked deed has been done.
I never look at photographs from the past. I have them in a drawer, in a box and in photo albums, but I never look at them. I don't want to be reminded of it. I'm so very set on being me now and not being me then, that I can't be drawn back into a time when everything was different and opposite to however it is now. Nothing in my life is a reflection of what it was like then, I may as well be another woman or have taken on a totally different personage. In a way I have. I have a different name and a different life and a different attitude. Even my psyche is different. It's like I've gone into the witness protection program and have taken on a different identity. I don't even remind me of who I was then.
So anyway, I'm working hard to get to my 600th post and the only way to get there is by writing whenever the muse inspires me, which is at totally odd times of the day and night. When I have no obligations, my 24 hours get divided up whichever way I please, and I sleep when I feel like it and I'm up when I feel like it and I'm active and lucid at the strangest times of the day or night. I feel a freedom that's very liberating and I feel that I have to answer to no one and that I don't have to follow any strict guidelines as to how I divide up and spend my time. I think that's the best part about living alone. You don't have to calculate in that other person's schedule that he is stuck to and probably wants you to stick to also. That's the pitfall of togetherness, it creates that restriction of physical and emotional space that I have a great need for. It would be wonderful if there were another person like me and a house big enough to contain us both. Then it might work.
It's too bad that it takes some people a life time before they get to know themselves well enough to know what they really need and want out of life. It isn't until these past two years that I've really come to know my own mind and my own needs. That's because I never really lived on my own before. I was never a singular unit before. I was always a part of some social system and playing some pre-described role in it that, it turned out, was not well suited for me. I wish I had known all along what an non conformist I really am instead of trying to make myself fit in the picture, whichever one it turned out to be. The problem was that so far I haven't fitted into any sort of socially accepted picture of what a woman ought to fit into. At least not those of the traditional kinds. Not up to now that I'm alone and happier. I liked having children, but was bent under the weight of the responsibility of it all and at one point that became too much, along with the rest of the trappings of middle class life and the resulting unhappinesses.
So, again I'm working towards my 600th post on an early Saturday morning. In a little while I will take out the dog and go to sleep. One must sooner or later. There is no getting around to it. I'm going to fill up the weekend as I see fit and do things the way I want to do them. I want to have complete liberty to behave in a way that I want to. Sometimes you have to walk the line and sometimes you don't. It is interesting that I haven't mentioned the one person who keeps me undeniably tied to my past, and that is my daughter. I can never really cut my ties completely because of her. She is a constant reminder. She is not a constant presence in my life. She lives too far away from me and I can go a whole day without thinking about her too much. But she is always there in the background and prohibits me from forgetting where I came from. Children are mixed blessings.
Alright, the philosophical hour is over. We return to the reality of the day, which is not half bad. After all, I've got a warm bed to look forward to after I brave the cold of the early morning.
Have a good morning you all.
Ciao,
Nora
