The water is back on today, it was a long time coming and it is a long story and feel free to ask but I am determined not to vent here.
However, what it did was to make me realize how not-come-to-grips I am with my own childhood. The clashing aspect here is that at the time, I didn't mind how bizarre and moment to moment - while being eternally languid - my childhood was. However, as an adult, trying to achieve the American holy grail of "normalcy" in my life and the lives of my children I have to admit that it was out there, and therefore, by default - so am I.
I guess, when I thought I'd leveled out, all I had done was to distance myself from those days. Those dirt-floor-shack poor days. The ups and downs of living in ranch country where your nearest friend lives 3 miles away and that is also basically your nearest neighbor. Where no one can hear you scream - no seriously, they can't. Where when the well burnt out and we couldn't afford a new one yet my grandmother taught me how to steal water.
The place where if I didn't want to get up on a morning like a normal teen girl, and I didn't feel like doing my chores lives were lost. Real alive things died because of me. Granted not people, but ducks and chickens and living breathing things nonetheless.
The life I locked up and threw away the key to because when I tell the stories I laugh and cry at the same time until I'm shaking. The life I locked and threw away the key to because I got tired of the look I'd get in the normal world from people who couldn't believe that such times and such places exist in real life and they were too shocked or horrified to really want to hear it. The look I'd get when people were either sorry for me or disgusted by me because it challenged their perceptions of what is and isn't going on in this world in the modern era. The life that leveled the playing field with me and people 50 years my senior because poverty is the great leveler and living without electricity and or water and or heating are universal amongst people in any country time or age who have been through these things.
Things I forced down because in trying to understand common human nature, I had to lock my own relative existence away. Because I couldn't understand pettiness or the fatigue a person felt because it was laundry week. I could only understand the fatigue a person felt when they had to walk around miles and miles trying to find the horse that slipped the fence -- again.
The things I forced down because I needed to move on and I was really just ready for the next adventure. The things I forced down because the world needs someone to blame and because they couldn't blame me, the child in the scenario they'd blame my mom - and sorry but she's sacred. You don't get to blame her, no one does. Not even me. She did her best, I was there I saw it.
All of this is melodramatic to say the least, and exhausting. Very psych 101 and probably predictable if only I were watching from some vantage point far away.
That's the point I think, I'm exhausted. When the water came back on today I actually found myself going through the routine we used to go through when the water came back on when I was a child -- and when I realized that I became physically and mentally exhuasted.
SO we have a long weekend because of President's Day, kids are off school on Monday. Brian and I talked about what to do. We decided we could re-arrange the bookshelves. Certain activities in my house are getting on my nerves, mostly because I don't have the time for them but I want to. I want to be able to get the books organized and every time I take them down to organize them something happens. I need to catch up with house work after a week without water. I need to do laundry and mop, do dishes and wipe surfaces. I sometimes resent that the only times the place gets a good clean are when something is going on that forces the issue. We have people over, the furnace people need a clear path to the garage -which causes me to clear the path in the garage full of boxes. Sometimes I want to just stay home and do nothing but organize and make the place nice for me on my terms and lock the door to the outside world that dictates what I do when and how.
Then sometimes you have a friend that calls you and says she is going to Taos for the weekend and would you like to go too? You think to yourself, Taos. Taos, pretty, real mountains, snow, and calm. Then, you think books, mops and clean the house? Then, you think but I'm so tired - I could sleep more if I stayed home. I could rest more if I went to Taos. To Taos or to Clean?
However, what it did was to make me realize how not-come-to-grips I am with my own childhood. The clashing aspect here is that at the time, I didn't mind how bizarre and moment to moment - while being eternally languid - my childhood was. However, as an adult, trying to achieve the American holy grail of "normalcy" in my life and the lives of my children I have to admit that it was out there, and therefore, by default - so am I.
I guess, when I thought I'd leveled out, all I had done was to distance myself from those days. Those dirt-floor-shack poor days. The ups and downs of living in ranch country where your nearest friend lives 3 miles away and that is also basically your nearest neighbor. Where no one can hear you scream - no seriously, they can't. Where when the well burnt out and we couldn't afford a new one yet my grandmother taught me how to steal water.
The place where if I didn't want to get up on a morning like a normal teen girl, and I didn't feel like doing my chores lives were lost. Real alive things died because of me. Granted not people, but ducks and chickens and living breathing things nonetheless.
The life I locked up and threw away the key to because when I tell the stories I laugh and cry at the same time until I'm shaking. The life I locked and threw away the key to because I got tired of the look I'd get in the normal world from people who couldn't believe that such times and such places exist in real life and they were too shocked or horrified to really want to hear it. The look I'd get when people were either sorry for me or disgusted by me because it challenged their perceptions of what is and isn't going on in this world in the modern era. The life that leveled the playing field with me and people 50 years my senior because poverty is the great leveler and living without electricity and or water and or heating are universal amongst people in any country time or age who have been through these things.
Things I forced down because in trying to understand common human nature, I had to lock my own relative existence away. Because I couldn't understand pettiness or the fatigue a person felt because it was laundry week. I could only understand the fatigue a person felt when they had to walk around miles and miles trying to find the horse that slipped the fence -- again.
The things I forced down because I needed to move on and I was really just ready for the next adventure. The things I forced down because the world needs someone to blame and because they couldn't blame me, the child in the scenario they'd blame my mom - and sorry but she's sacred. You don't get to blame her, no one does. Not even me. She did her best, I was there I saw it.
All of this is melodramatic to say the least, and exhausting. Very psych 101 and probably predictable if only I were watching from some vantage point far away.
That's the point I think, I'm exhausted. When the water came back on today I actually found myself going through the routine we used to go through when the water came back on when I was a child -- and when I realized that I became physically and mentally exhuasted.
SO we have a long weekend because of President's Day, kids are off school on Monday. Brian and I talked about what to do. We decided we could re-arrange the bookshelves. Certain activities in my house are getting on my nerves, mostly because I don't have the time for them but I want to. I want to be able to get the books organized and every time I take them down to organize them something happens. I need to catch up with house work after a week without water. I need to do laundry and mop, do dishes and wipe surfaces. I sometimes resent that the only times the place gets a good clean are when something is going on that forces the issue. We have people over, the furnace people need a clear path to the garage -which causes me to clear the path in the garage full of boxes. Sometimes I want to just stay home and do nothing but organize and make the place nice for me on my terms and lock the door to the outside world that dictates what I do when and how.
Then sometimes you have a friend that calls you and says she is going to Taos for the weekend and would you like to go too? You think to yourself, Taos. Taos, pretty, real mountains, snow, and calm. Then, you think books, mops and clean the house? Then, you think but I'm so tired - I could sleep more if I stayed home. I could rest more if I went to Taos. To Taos or to Clean?
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