Balance

I’ve calmed my mind and quieted my heart. There’s security in knowing “it’s all in your head”.

My grandmother told me that age was “all in your head”, “your only as old as you feel”. I never wanted to grow up. To be bitterness, pain, pessimism, to suffer with heartache and loss. To fight with a lover and beat my children and work two jobs and still have nothing. To be surrounded by poverty and the pain of others. To scheme and fight and cheat, to step on others to move up lifes ladder.

I wanted peace in my world. To have security and a home, happy children and friends, a supportive husband that would give me the freedom to be a mom first. I prayed for this; and god gave me everything I asked for. And part of me knows that I should be grateful for his beautiful gifts. I’m surrounded by people with less and still I’m dissatisfied with all that I have.

What I didn’t know to ask for was something else. Intimacy. Trust. I’m not talking about fidelity. It is the intimacy of sharing without fear. I’ve never told all my secrets to anyone. I locked them up so I could be this peaceful person. The only problem is they haven’t stayed locked up. I used to call them ghosts. Mostly childhood memories of abuse and neglect. I’d wake up from a nightmare and my strong, safe, loving husband would hold me until I slept again. I would press my face to his chest and breathe in his scent and I could feel the nightmare fade and the memory soundly locked away again. After a few years it happened less often, now nearly not at all.

The ghost that haunts me today is the old me; or younger me, how ever you want to look at it. The passionate, boundless person that lived in the moment and didn’t know any other way. What part of me have I traded to be the "peaceful" person I try to be today? Is it really peaceful to hide behind a mask.

This "me" is so close to the surface now I feel transparent, as if someone looking at me can see that I might be different. The mask has slipped. The person I see in the mirror is more creative, calm, satisfied with what I'm doing. I'm discoverying how to balance but sometimes the weight is a little shifted.