The Dance of Many- Creating your path in life.

What if the dance you must learn is not the same dance of the many? Do you fall and stumble? Do you stay in the corner not able to take a breath and take your first steps, or begin your own?

We are told we must pick one and that one will determine who we are. Our parents, teachers and bosses repeat this sentiment and belief. The choice we make at a tender age will be what we are judged upon and will be unchanging. If we make a wrong choice or stray off the assigned steps that others take, it is dangerous. This sentiment is more intense in the South Asian cultures, and even more so if you happen to be female. You must be studious. You must be humble. You must be obedient and chaste. This waltz is constricting in movement and range. There is no room for joyful leaps and jumps.

There are many dances, and I have tried. Each one of them a different kind, a different me. Those around me have already judged me. Judgment for just being in the family I was in, having the mother that I had. Our family’s distinct melody was a sorrowful, lonely tune.

I was already losing my beat. I had no choice but to try and be the different elements of the many different hymns in my life. Most of my past dances were disharmonious, fractured, and incomplete.

This rule of the dance of many, the steps we must take is one of the greatest untruths in our world. You can change your melody. You can dance. You can end up a full and happy person in your song.

The songs that I have had were that of an abused child.

The song of the unruly and crazy teenager. The partying and random, selfish acts. The lying twenty-year-old, The girl who kissed way too many frogs.

The song of a dull working and no fun adult trying to make up for lost time.

I am a mother and wife.

This song is filled with many beautiful and organic melodies, and they hum to me every morning and night.

I have fallen on my face. And I am not ashamed. I am regretful of the hurt that I have caused but not ashamed.

I have become a more empathetic, caring and thoughtful person because of my missteps.

My fumbles and clumsy steps of the dance of many made me appreciate when I did get it right. When I danced my footsteps, it has been genuine and pure for me. I know the pain of the past bungles of my wayward feet. I have faith in the power of evolution that we all have in our lives because I am living it here and now.

The reason I am writing this is there is no space in our world. In this prescribed narrative; we must appear perfect and unchanging. We must dance a rigid and dull waltz at all times.

It all seems like all successful people have known only one dance. This is a lie. They have broken free and have not told anyone... Why do we hide these different songs and melodies?

There is so much competition in the world; there is no chance of divulging your mistakes or vulnerabilities for our little tunes.

And I am aware this is in all us in one form or another. What can come out of this? Empathy and hope. A song we all desperately need to hear and to connect with.

"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering." -Ben Okri retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/31425.Ben_Okri

What if?

They say that having young kids brings a lot of stress in a marriage, that it brings your personal past and issues out; as you try to do better with the little beings that are now in existence from the love that you had together. What if this is not enough?  

They have been through a lot, and there is love, but what if that is not sufficient? What if she fails him? What if he fails her?

What if she stopped with the ever-raging   “mommy wars”: the constant passive aggressive whispers that come from the background melding together into excessive white noise. “We never did it that way, when we had kids?”, “”, and all the little remarks that they are all guilty of as if they are at all an expert, of how they had parented themselves with no mistakes and with no regrets. What if she just stood her ground and just stopped with the constant passive aggressive games. What is she held their gaze and did not waver?

What if she fails when she goes back to work? What if the time away causes her to lose her place and the chance for promotion.  What if she will never win at the office politic games. What if she never gets a chance because she is not their brand of cool?

What if it does not matter anymore, and she stood tall and for herself and on her own for her own. The need for perfection is in everything. No one can be the perfect worker, mother, wife or even friend but we pretend that we are, what if we just stopped, if we stopped acting. What if she stopped judging herself on the unrealistic and toxic standards that fill every role for her identity, what if she just stopped giving a fuck and instead embraced humility without the need for perfection; to allow herself to grow. What if?

Fractures.

She was so beautiful, I mean she still is, but back then there was a radiance that emanated from her.  Her dusky skin, dark brown eyes, high cheekbones with her strong signature dimples with an ebony mane that was always wavy from the thick braid that she wore the night before.

I was never able to be close to her or even touch her for too long without getting burned.  She loved us in her way ( the best she was able to ), but she was splintered from a time where we could not travel to save her.

I used to yearn for her as a child and be terrified of her at the same time. I spent my days watching for any signs of one of her fractures erupting into a fiery ball at my brother and I….I was never able to get out of the way fast enough to get out of the way. My brother was my protector, and he was good at avoiding her wrath. We would hide and play games,, like soldiers in a bunker, always there for each other.

 Her daily laughter from things we could not see was haunting.  Her laugh would travel through the house like an echo of the illness.  We had few friends growing up and the ones we had stayed for only a short time once our home was exposed.

The thing about growing up with someone with mental illness is it spreads to all in a family.  My dad never had the heart to commit her, she was too precious to him.  She was overcome by fear and paranoia from everything, he felt like it would kill her.  He loved her as no man has ever loved a woman and that love combined with her illness broke my childhood.

Her love was like small rays of light from the sun through a window, but her anger was like an explosion.  I know now in my new years of motherhood what that meant.  How profoundly that affected me and how that will always be part of me.  I know now that I will never get the comfort that I so desperately needed as a young child or the closure as an adult.  Her illness came like crashing tides that she would be swept up in and was unable to get out.  We were all left with her little ripples, but those ripples are just a layer of what I have become.

I still grieve at times, but I do know that the importance of the gestures and actions I make, my children will carry with them.  The ripples will lesson from I to them and from them to their children until there is only calm and a serene place from where she was.

The Imperfect Me!

When people met me, they can never guess what my past has been.

 I am not the typical case that you would think when you hear about my past.

I look ordinary; there are no telltale physical signs of what I have been through in my life. I have no debilitating issues with my weight or my looks. I have a bright and chipper demeanor and most people assume that my life was the norm for a sweet and silly girl that I portray myself to be.

I love to laugh and am reasonably good at meeting new people but I am not your average woman in her late thirties. I have not had a great childhood nor did I make my way in life like so many people have done.  I am not saying, that their lives have not been hard, but I have been on the fringe of many places and many different states that have not been glimpsed by others.

 My past haunts me some days and shames me on others but on most days it gives me a window and knowledge that aids me and provides me with humility, grace, and contentment with the simple things.

Don’t worry this is not a harrowing tale of how I won my addiction over meth, nothing that exciting or dramatic. This is just the story of my past, present, and my hope and struggle for my future.

Just a woman at last, who has finally made her way in the world and is now moving forward still trying to make my way to the next phase.