How It Happened

    I don't exactly know when it happened, that feeling that would not go away. The feeling that I was stagnating and life was flying by and I was but a spectator. Undoubtedly if circumstances had been slightly different, I may have ignored it. But the circumstances were not slightly different. They were thus: I was trapped in a mudded-in/snowed-in woodsy haven. I often stayed there for a month or more without leaving. 

   That's how it began. The unease, the wandering aimlessly from room to room, the wasted time on worthless movies, games and internet chat. Nothing much mattered, the sameness, the inevitability of all those things we do day in and day out. The routine so undeviated from. 

    I moved us to New Mexico where I could come and go when I wished. I breathed deeply into the desert magic and walked the land, uncovering all those things one does when one is new to a place. I found a public pool, plenty of Catholic churches, and the renewed joy of cooking new foods. 

    I realize now that the desire for a tattoo (now four and counting) was really my wolf woman demanding recognition. "I have something to say!" Of course I waited to arrive in a place where tattoos were literally everywhere and quickly aging and greying white women went unnoticed for the most part. 

    As time ensued, and I do mean years, my husband's health deteriorated to the point that he lives in a recliner, wheelchair, and clings to oxygen. The pandemic has barely bothered him, he goes no where, twice in the last year. 

    Perhaps the restriction to being home virtually all the time is cause of my growing unease and restlessness. Perhaps it's because of my husband's life which leaves me responsible for literally everything. Which is nothing new to me, I spent most of my adult life taking care of me, doing all the crap of life, the taxes, the car repairs, the insurance claims, the shopping, everything. It's just back with an heavy stone to carry along with it. 

   This functions as my story, and will be told in segments as I figure it out and try to arrange it in my mind. I am coming into me and I am urged on by the women before me and the stories of women which have largely been kept from us 

   I am learning, I am growing, and I will howl at the moon!