Light of Heart

I went last night to see a musical with a friend of mine. The play was called Girls Night Out; I think it's touring this summer, and it was very fun if not exactly a masterpiece of the theater. The plot is basically an excuse for the women to sing a lot of classic songs, I Will Survive, At Seventeen, Cry Me a River… great songs to just belt out. The loose plot is about four women and their dead friend and how their lives have evolved over the last 22 years… which really makes it sound a billion times more serious than it actually was, especially since really they could have just skipped the plot and sang and it would have been equally good. But anyway, there's Kate, the nerdy, gawky kid, and Anita, the depressed one, and Lisa, the insecure one, and Carol, the party girl who never shows her friends the pain inside. And at intermission, my friend asked which of those people I'd been in high school. And really, the answer was, none of those people. I mean, I'm the most like Carol, but I never in my life have had the ability to just be fun, to be a party girl, to cut loose like that. Even with alcohol, I'm mostly morose, and everything I do, everything I am, seems to be about this relentless seriousness.

And I've always been like this. Always too serious as a child, always the one at college parties who'd just be lost and bored, and would go home and read. A little less so in grad school, which was filled with people Just Like Me. And now… well, still that way, no knack for small talk, no knack for chit chat, not good at lightness.

I've been musing about this post for days… started Thursday, and it's now Saturday, and I'm betting on Sunday before I finish.

And it's Saturday again.

And all this time, I've been trying to think of what I mean, about this lightness thing. I don't really know. I just feel so sad all the time, and worried, and when I'm not sad and worried, I just feel overwhelmed. This house, the garden, the pool, my job, the eBay business, my consulting work… and then the things that really come first, Michael and my son, and the day-to-day stuff. Just making it through the next day. You can't lose weight by thinking about losing weight. I mean, it doesn't hurt, and usually there has to be some thought in there somewhere, but ultimately you have to actually DO something. And it's the same thing with everything else. I look around me, and I think, tomorrow I will do this, tomorrow I will clean all this up and finish my work and finish knitting this sweater, and I will be beautiful and strong and dance and laugh. And the next day is the same as this day.

So usually at this point, I do the pep talk thing… how tomorrow really will be different, how I will try harder, how it will be ok. But I don't feel like that today. I feel like curling up and crying and wanting someone to fix it all for me. I want my mother… the mother that my mother should have been, if her life wasn't a lot like this, too. I want a thousand things that I can't have, and today… it all seems too much to even try.

But I will.