I was just reading your blog and listening to “Twine”. When I started reading your post about Kicking the Fat Girl, I was utterly overwhelmed.  Even now as I write this, I’m fighting.  About a third of the way into it I thought, she’s inside my head, she’s writing about me.

All my life I’ve been the strong one, the supporter, the shoulder, the cheerleader, the one that stands up for everyone else.  Sometimes I feel like one of those people in the sport of curling, like I’m one of those people brushing the ice and frantically skating sideways so that someone else can achieve a goal. My parents divorced when I was 8 and my dad all but disappeared while my mom decided to live her own life with my brother and I as appendages. I had to stand up at that point and take care of my little brother and myself.  I’m going through some pretty intense personal struggles right now and I found myself ruining my keyboard while I sobbed over it.  

 Thank you.  Thank you for showing me that other mothers and wives feel the way that I do, that it doesn’t diminish the strength of who I am to feel lost and shadowed.  That it’s ok to take time for myself.

 Always,

J

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J,

Thank you for writing. It means the world to me that you would take the time to do so.

Personal struggles? LAWD. I get it.

Your metaphor of the sport of curling is well said.

I have found that there are other women out there who don’t necessarily think that being a mother is all they should long for, but it’s like a secret that they feel they can’t share or something. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again–I’ve just grown weary of shutting myself down to make other people comfortable. Hell, I need to know that I’m not alone in feeling this way, too. I love being a mom. Love it. However, I am an artist, too. I don’t think those two things should be mutually exclusive but for some reason, they mix like oil and water. There always seems to be too much of one and not enough of the other. It requires a constant shaking to make it work and, frankly, it gets exhausting.

I am deplorable at taking time for myself. I tend to stuff and stuff and stuff and stuff and then–Zack can attest to this–I blow up and everything is way worse than it should be had I allowed myself the ability to care for myself in smaller increments. Does that make sense?

The other night–Monday night–I was literally so mad at Zack (and really, poor guy, he had nothing to do truly with why I was angry. He merely unwittingly lit the fuse…) I called him an asshole and stormed out of the house right after dinner. Ended up in a movie theatre parking lot where I sat — fuming. Decided I’d see The Great Gatsby. BY MYSELF. BECAUSE NO ONE WOULD WANT TO SEE IT WITH ME ANYWAY. BECAUSE HELL! I’M THE ONLY ONE IN MY FAMILY WHO HAS READ THE FUCKING BOOK. ( And it probably won’t be any good!* ) I watched that movie and ate six fun size Baby Ruth’s before the previews had even finished.

I left the theatre and returned home three hours after I initially left feeling spent and sheepish.

“I left myself alone for too long.”

You see, after the “Kicking The Fat Girl While She’s Down” blog post, when Zack finally came home from his travels to Dubai and Istanbul where he was doing cool shit and meeting cool people and just generally being awesome, I crawled into bed and didn’t leave for a week. There may or may not have been a bottle of Vanilla Smirnoff on the floor by my side of the bed. I was a mess. I was so tired. It took some time but, after that week, and going to my Dr. and getting on an anti-depressant, I’m doing much much better. I realized that a lot of it could’ve been avoided had I slowed myself down. The expectations I have for myself are so fucking high I think that, if I ever did attain them, I’d end up in the same fate as Icarus. I need to go easier on myself.

Which brings me back to the other night.

“I left myself alone for too long.”

I realized that it had been a year since I had been in the studio. A year since I recorded what would become the two EP’s, The Cracks & The Crevices and The Loss & The Love. Realized that I needed to get back into the studio again to pour out everything that has been building up in me. The pouring out is a pouring in of sorts. I have to spend time pouring into myself or I will become a bitter, cynical, shrew of a woman and I know that is not who or what I am. I have to tell myself, everyday, that my circumstances and surroundings do not define who I am. They do not. This does not always work. Some days I tell myself that and I might as well have told myself that I can fly if I just believe hard enough. Some days I tell myself that and end up eating my feelings in the form of Chicken Tikka Masala and a Coke and twenty-seven BBQ chips and a brownie (gluten free at least, I mean c’mon–I have standards) and oooooh! Are those Skittles? Good for me. I only had four of them. Packs. The small kind.

I marvel at Zack’s ability to care for himself so well. It’s not a selfish thing; it’s not a self centered thing, it really isn’t. It’s not that he doesn’t stress about stuff — he does. However, he can just turn things off; simply, and without the wrestling around that I go through to get there. I honestly don’t know how he does it. When his head hits the pillow every night he…get this…goes to sleep. I can’t do that. I surmise that when my head hits the pillow my brain associates that with, “Time to think about everything ever — in DOUBLE WARP SPEED. Time to make a list of all the lists you have to make! Aaaaaaanddd GO!”

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I ended the email by telling her to keep an eye out for a thing I’ve been working on; a thing that, maybe, in time, I will share more about here. I signed it,

“Much love, in buckets, your way.”

I sat there for a bit staring at my monitor while Hawke and Joshua and Caleb and Phoenix laughed and fought and bickered and played around me. While I watched Zack in our bedroom packing for a big job he has in Arizona this weekend. While I stared down the never-ending laundry (whoaaaa…whoaaaa…whoaaaaa…) in front of me on the dining room table. It dawned on me that I hadn’t really given J an answer. Not really. Nothing definitive. All I did was share where I am and probably too much of my icky bits and that didn’t feel like enough. Then I thought that–in situations like the ones we moms’ are in–sometimes that’s all we need. That in the times where the lines of where we end and our children begin starts to blur; in the times where we feel reduced to being mere drill sergeants; the times where we feel victorious getting to take a dump in peace; the times where our teenagers look at us like we’re something the dog threw up; sometimes all we need to know is that we’re not the only ones who struggle to remember who we are when we aren’t caring for other people. And that it’s okay to feel a little lost sometimes and like everybody else is a better mom than we are. That maybe you don’t agree with Nancy Turner when she says, “The best thing a girl can be is a good wife and mother. It is a girl’s highest calling…” That maybe you don’t think it’s the best thing a girl can be; maybe it’s one of the best things a girl can be. It’s okay. It doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad mom. It does not. And if, at the end of the day, you have no one else in your life telling you this then I swear, you have me. Little ol’ Meg, over here in my southeast corner of North America, waving my hands and saying, “I GET YOU!”

So, I thought all of this. And then?

I hit send.

“The great motherhood friendships are the ones in which two women can admit [how difficult mothering is] quietly to each other, over cups of tea** at a table sticky with spilled apple juice and littered with markers without tops.”
― Anna Quindlen

*It actually wasn’t too terribly bad despite the fact that the movie portrayed Daisy as being far more interesting than Fitzgerald ever intended her to be.

**That would be red wine at my house.

“Hey mom. I just cleaned the bathroom for you,” and he gestured towards the now soaking wet hand towel on the toilet lid.

“You did?! Oh, thanks buddy! I see you used the towel here. Okay. What all did you clean?” I was a little nervous but wasn’t about to show it.

“Everything. The toilet, these walls, this floor, the sink, and a little bit of the tub.” He stood proudly, his arms crossed.

“What did you clean everything with, buddy?”

“Oh, that was easy. I used the water in the toilet!”

Right. Fabulous.

“Well, GOLLY! Thanks Hawke! You need to wash your hands now, okay?” I began gathering things up so that I could break out the bleach spray.

“You’re welcome, Mom. And I already did wash my hands – I got them dry like this,” and then showed me how he dried his hands off in his hair.

I give up. He’ll survive.

It was life changing.

I’m still processing everything that I saw there. Processing through conversations that I had, people that I had the privilege to meet, and the experience of being in such an interesting part of the world. I went because Zack didn’t want to experience Cuba without me – to be honest, I wasn’t sure how I was going to fare surrounded by a bunch of photographers, but I think I managed to hold my own. I used my little Epson RD-1 that Zack purchased for me a couple of weeks ago; I treated it like a film camera (I kept the screen turned around and left the leather case it came with on so that I wasn’t tempted to try and see what I was shooting), and tried my best to capture how I see the world. It was intimidating being the only person there who didn’t really know what I was doing but I had a great time. There were so many fabulous moments but the discovery of the brilliant photographer Raúl Cañibano was truly the highlight. Zack and I, along with a few of the other workshop attendees (who I now consider dear friends), had dinner with Raúl and his wife Lisette and it was amazing.

Oh you guys, I didn’t mean to, but I totally find myself being drawn to the capturing of moments with a camera. These are a few of my rudimentary photos from the trip.

You can click on the pictures below to see them larger if you’d like.

I cannot wait to go back to Cuba; we only just scratched the surface while we were there. I came home sunburned, exhausted, overwhelmed, and yet completely happy. If you ever have the chance to go; go. You won’t regret it.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

-Sylvia Plath

My figs aren’t exactly the same, but they are figs nonetheless. Still here but wrestling hard.

It wasn’t her fault. Dr. Sarah was lovely, as always. “We’ve got to help you learn to take better care of yourself,” she said at one point.

“All I want to do is sleep,” I replied.

“That sounds like depression.”

“Great.”

I was/am feeling pretty beat up. Zack left for the other side of the world to go teach and inspire and help people. Also to shoot for Fuji in Istanbul. You know, cool stuff. It’s a constant battle between the two of us on this issue of his work.

He says, “It’s what pays the bills. It’s draining. It’s not glamorous. It’s hard work.”

I reply with, “Yes, but you get to do what you LOVE to do. You’re working with a camera in your hands. You get to work in photography.”

I am the mom. I do the mom stuff. I am told that should be enough. That to be a mother is the most noble thing. The best thing.

There must be something wrong with me.

I love my kids but I long to do more with my life. It’s hard to watch my husband walking in his talents and not feel left behind. To not feel shut down. To not wonder, “When do I get a turn?”

Maybe that’s selfish.

I’m being pretty vulnerable when I write this.

Maybe I’ll erase this.

Anyway, all of this was going through my mind yesterday. Like it does. A sort of endless cycle.

“Just hang on, Meg. In 11 years you’ll get to make a decision for yourself. Based on what you want to do. You can do whatever the hell you want. In 11 years.”

I miss my husband. I like the guy, he’s my — as Hawke would say it — “best priend”. Last night I started watching some of his YouTube videos just to hear the sound of his voice. While watching the Pro Photographer Cheap Camera Challenge I made the mistake of reading the top few comments.

Where I saw this:

The fat girl is me. I was the one walking around in the background with Alamby.

I saw that and logically knew that I shouldn’t be affected by it. But I was. Oh I was.

So I wept. Hard. And for a long time.

I had a moment of what I would call “weakness” where I shared the screen shot on Facebook. Normally I am not one to share something like that, but I did. A lot of people responded with kind words. Words that were a balm to my wounded little heart. They meant a lot to me, so if you were one of them, thank you very much.

I am trying very hard to pull myself up by my bootstraps — like I always have. Like I always do. But I am having a much harder time of it than I normally do.

I am tired. So so tired. I’ve been pulling myself up by my bootstraps since my mother died when I was 13. Taking care of everyone else. I don’t know how much longer I can keep up. Part of me wants to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and sleep — Rip Van Winkle style — for a long ass time. Even trying to write this is hard. It feels stilted. Clumsy. Wooden.

Being a mom is hard. Being a creative mom who can’t find herself is harder. Yeah, I just said that.

I know I will make it out of this somehow; right now, though, it’s feeling pretty grim.

What are some things you do when things feel so dark? I’m telling you — I could use some insights.

The song is actually still a work in progress; what was recorded were merely ideas and rough sketches for a hopeful finished product. I started writing the song shortly after the death of my Grandmother, who passed away the day after Christmas this past year (2012). Her name was Vera, but was always called Polly, and I was mourning the fact that I did not get a chance to say goodbye before she died. There are no lyrics because I did not have words to sing. Just melodies, and the desire to use my voice as an instrument. When Zack asked if I had anything that could work for the film he was making, I played him a bit of the song and he liked it, so my dear friend, Deke Spears (who helped me produce The Cracks & The Crevices and The Loss & The Love), and I put together what you hear in the track.

It might be finished. It might not. I might leave it as is. I might change it or morph it into something else. If anything I feel that it captures a bit of the emotion.

What do you think? Should I leave it as is? Or give it actual words and fill it out a bit more?

Thanks for stopping by.

“To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.”

Thomas Campbell, “Hallowed Ground”

Also, soon I will start the process of recording four more songs to bring this trilogy of EPs* project to a close. I use the word, “close” lightly though, as this process has been so much more of a beginning for me than I can properly convey.

I’m getting ready for this winter; hunkering down with good wine, good books, time in my new studio (more to come on this later) not a little chaos, as there always tends to be chaos in spades with four boys running about my house, and ruminating on what is to come. There is so much on its way and it is all so very, very good. Things have been changing in me. Much. A lot. More muchness is happening in me? To me? All internal, all in heart and head. The best kind of growing larger. Although, if I don’t lay off the egg nog I’ll be growing a little more externally, too. I’ll write more when I have the words. They are there, just not quite ripe enough for picking, and I am getting ready to do some harvesting.

“Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.” Pietro Aretino

*First was The Cracks & The Crevices, then The Loss & The Love, and soon to come, The Hope & The Hurt.

I swore that I wouldn’t get sucked into photography ANYTHING.

That’s what Zack does. He’s the photographer.

And yet here I am walking out the door everyday with my little SX-70 trying to capture moments in real time and not just in megabytes. Not in pixels.

I want something I can hold.

I don’t do well with screens. I don’t like looking at screens (she said, while typing staring at a screen), I don’t look good on screens; I am not a fan of digital period.

Give me analog or give me death.

Thus, the beauty of the Impossible Project and the loveliness that comes from their effort to bring back the analog image. Muchly much joy is derived from the sound of the camera launching into action and giving me a picture of what I just saw. Never as I originally saw it, though. Always something elusive in how differently the camera sees what I see.

It’s addictive.

I love it.

Shhhhh…