All the Ladies

I am really loving us. You and I. You have been so giving. I really have been thinking about you. About us.

I was feeling guilty, of course, about my last post and all the whining, negative posts before it in the last year...the year of reckoning, the year my daughter starting driving and looking at colleges, the year my body is deconstructing its reproductive ability. I was feeling bad for you. For reading about my darkness and sadness and how it elicits such love and support from you, you whom has no time for me.

I don't still feel guilty today. I turned my thinking into something like this...we all will face all these same things I am facing. Either you have already buried your parents, or you will. Maybe you never had parents and had to grieve that already. It is a certain and natural thing that we will all bury our parents.

We all will say goodbye to our children. Maybe you never had any and you had to let that choice happen, maybe you have raised your kids and already saw them leave the nest, maybe you have babies and it seems like a million miles away, maybe you are just hopeful to have or get a baby. But we all have to deal with the decison or the experience in someway. Maybe you have a disabled child that will never get to make the choices my dear lucky daughter can. Maybe you buried your child, the worst imaginable of all scenarios. But it is a certain and natural thing that we all face the issue of children and reproduction itself.

We all deal with the hormonal tides. Maybe you had a hysterectomy, or cancer and had surgical removal and early menopuase. Maybe it came and went without fanfare, but still its gone. Maybe you are facing menopause yet to come, periods yet to start, horrific pain and PMS and can't wait for it to go. But it is cetain and natural that the function of our reproductive system will take up huge amounts of our lives.

We all will face my same life issues, its all just timing, when, and how many at once. So of course I need not feel guilty for you reading my thoughts nor should I feel bad about you loving me. You know you will be here or you have been here, my timing is now, all these things. I will lose my mother and my daughter and my periods about the same time. Interesting that these are all such female issues.  Female rights of passage.

And yet, you, you who gives and gives can come here and give some more. You who should take instead of give because you are tired, depleted, often forcing yourself to the grocery store yet another time, folding that towel for the 176th time, emptying the dishwasher again, deciding on a menu again, figuring out what to wear again, smiling again, buying another gift, mailing another card, reminding, listing, driving, circling, you come here and give some more.

I love us. I love us women who give until there is nothing else. Of course we plummet through depressions. Of course we share anxieties. Of course we come here for a community who understands each other.

I feel very moved by us. I am so proud of us. I think I will remember that in 10 minutes when I am guilty for not giving someone I love enough attention. We do so much.

I would never speak to someone the way I speak to myself. Critical. Judgemental. I would never let someone talk to you the way I talk to myself. And that insidious hating voice once identified and kept pretty quiet waited, opportunist that she is, until I became more exhausted and weakened and she started whispering, so quiet, so in rhythm with my own better thoughts that I didn't hear her at all. I just became more guilty and depleted. She worked on me like a seductive abuser until she was yelling at me that I am worthless and cannot manage anything. Yelling and screaming and I was cowering in the corner hating and loving and believing her.

And then I remembered us. You and me. Strong, loving, take a bullet for our people women who have this horrible, hating, self loathing voice.

You want me to keep mine quiet. I want you to keep yours quiet.

And we bolster each other. And we keep talking to each other. You lift me up out of that corner, so I can hear the ridiculousness of my own thoughts. I hope I can remind you who you really are as well.

Strong, loving, soft, hard, beautiful. Woman.