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My Profile
Retro-retrospection - 2008-10-06
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10:23 a.m. - 2003-09-26
Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ Well, I don’t think my first 38 years on this planet were worthless, but then neither were they completely unexamined. I’ve kept a paper journal most of my life. It’s been sporadic, though. Also before e-mail I wrote a lot of letters. I didn’t mail very many of them. I realize now that the “letters” were actually an epistolary diary. I think the letters allowed me to set my thoughts down without guilt about wasting time. I wasn't staring at my own navel, I was "writing to someone". Turns out I wasn't writing to my MIL or my friends, I was writing to myself. With the advent of D-land I've been examining my life in far greater detail and depth than ever before. Poking through my mind on a daily basis has encouraged me, forced me, to look at a lot of things I'd never had the time or desire to look at before. Here in D-land I've gone from my original ambition of being a cyber, rather profane version of Erma Bombeck to a person who has slowly, but determinedly peeled herself down to her soul. I've been skimming through my archive and can actually see this evolution. The issues I've finally stepped up to and dealt with are in almost the same chronological order with which they occurred in my life. Some come back again and again as I dig deeper, and others were finally coughed up and that's all I needed to do and could move on. This past year especially, I have seemed to go through crisis after crisis. I've been wondering what the hell happened to me that my life suddenly seemed to be one endless psycho-drama. There WERE big things going on: my mother's death, my older son leaving home, my marriage had a big bloody hole torn into it, Wolf taking a quantum leap forward, we bought a house, I turned 40. But mostly it was finally allowing myself to acknowledge the contents of some pretty ugly and frightening emotional baggage. Baggage I'd SWORN I'd cheerfully left behind decades ago, but had really been toting with me all along. I started a chain reaction. As Tevye cries, "One little time I pull out the prop and where does it stop? Where does it stop?" Am I sorry? Do I regret opening myself up? Looking inside myself, ruthlessly shining a Mag-lite into some of the darkest corners of my being? No. It was necessary. It may have even happened without the prompt of keeping a daily journal. A journal with an audience, no less. It might have just been time and D-land was here to catch the fall-out. But I don't think so. D-land has been the catalyst. Both microscope and petrie dish, with D-land's help I've been able to look into my own squirmy wigglies and it's done me world's of good. Am I all better now? No. Am I finished dredging up all my junk? Probably not. But I do find myself with a new perspective. I feel lighter. Better. Stronger. And far more sure of who I am, what I can stand, and WHY I am the way I am. Not bad for $29.95 a year. One of the things I've learned from this experience was how to cut myself a break. My whole life I just kept bulling forward, riding roughshod over the hard parts, feeling all kinds of proud that I was "stronger" than my messes. I was bigger than the things that happened to me. Yet, perversely I was also small. I was a secondary character in my own life. A narrator of sorts while the real action happened around me. I was the "Our Town" Stage Manager and my family and friends were the Gibbs, the ones who REALLY mattered. I was just there to give directions. Well, I've given up my lowly chair on the edge of the stage apron and have stepped into the spotlight. I matter to myself. In the words of the ridiculously gorgeous Jon Bon Jovi: It's my life And it's now or never 'Cause I ain't gonna live forever I just want to live while I'm alive (It's my life) My heart is like an open highway Like Frankie said I did it my way I just want to live while I'm alive 'Cause it's my life! Onward, ~LA
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