It’s been 3 months since I shared that visioning post of our life on a farm. From Albania we plucked out that dream and went on an intense rollercoaster ride to land it on Bicol, the homeland of my father. Intensive research (again) and imaginings to connect the dots, to make real and incarnate that probable life of joy and prosperity in building a dairy farm where market demand is sky high and “there’s no risk of (business) failure”. After countless weeks of mania and 4-hour sleeps, now comes the dip.
This has been the motif of my life for 7 years: exuberant highs of chasing crazy dreams and investing all of me mentally, emotionally, socially, financially, creatively, only to be followed by abyssmal crashes–unbelivably hard, life-turning crashes that dig out a new rock bottom every time. Seven years ago, I was on a peak clarity with almost heavenly distilled vision. I knew what I wanted and it all came to me.
Since age six I’ve been on a spiritual quest, declaring to the universe that I wanted to be a saint. This seeking led me to Rilke and eventually to Steiner, which allowed the slowburn and digestion of the inner work that informed my art, life perspectives and choices. I never went for what was easy and obvious. Everything had to make inner sense. At age 36, I found peace and spiritual clarity…until I dared to ask, “What’s next? How do I move forward, expand, and clarify further?” The answer came simply and without fanfare: marriage and motherhood.
I’m now 43, and in a few months I will cross the threshold of having been a wife and mother for a full seven-year cycle.
These twin journeys have tested, pulled, pushed, propelled and ripped apart every nanofiber of my being, to the point that I don’t know who I am anymore. The extreme highs and lows of it all have made me dumb, numb and mute. I now live in Turkey where no one speaks English. Everyday for the last two years, I learned to not talk, and maybe alongside it, to not listen. I barely speak to anyone and get by on small talk, even to friends and family back home. Being “invisible” for this long has sealed the deal on this new me, who is muddled, inexpressive, constipated. I don’t flow. I don’t paint anymore. Writing and heartfelt conversations are scarce and feel like blips in the matrix.
And yet, onwards and upwards I go. I asked for this.
My marriage has been tried and tested multiple times over, and whether it survives may not be the point. I am learning what it entails to really see someone and to be seen by that person, in the face of everyday ups and downs. Together we’ve walked the path of courage, bouncing back, exploring unknowns, quiet and crazy laughter, and also financial failures, miscommunication, cultural gaps, strained friendships, self-doubt, depression and health scares. Remembering all that we’ve gone through together just now is giving me the feels…and perhaps this is the gift of marriage: It allows us to show up and be fully present in the realm of feelings, where it gets messy and great. It’s not the land of fairytale feelings. You build a boat together, set it out to sea, and go on wild adventures until the next calm port, where you decide to keep sailing together or not. We are not yet at a calm port.
Motherhood, for its part, has been a wellspring of unmatched joy. To be entrusted with the care and guidance of a child, who can move mountains with a smile or chuckle or happy dance–oh it’s very real that children are magical. Especially their tiny cuddles that go on and on and on every morning and every night. Their wonder and sheer delight in everything, it’s contagious and overflowing. And yet, the depletion in mothering is real too. To give 100% of myself non-stop and to inhabit the same time-space with another human being 24/7 is exhausting, and I always feel guilty for wanting solitude. I had so much of it before, it was my anchor. I never had a mentor; maybe solitude was it. And true to life’s plot twists, my mentor had to die for me to come into my own.
And so, marriage and motherhood are my ongoing wow. There is also the mothering of a different entity, Leadia, also turning 7 this year…and also wild, stubborn and unwielding and full of life.
I started this piece with low and confused energy and now feel lighter, as if I’ve tamed someting inside and let it go.
Some final thoughts: the journey so far has been to name and accept the boundaries of Who I Am, and then lose my anchor and stretch those boundaries far and wide, inside and out, this time in robust, permeable layers: I am still me, but you (other people, the world, life and feelings), who I let so close, are also me. The journey is to lose the I and You from our vocabulary altogether.
I have met amazing human beings along this incredibly wayward road, and their stories and wisdom are mini bonfires that keep me warm. Thank you.