Well, you know me...

...I'm a nomad, I can't feel bad about the way I am...

So: weekend was spent guardedly contemplating my identity. Two major causes of said self-examination: a day spent in the company of my parents and a evening spent in the company of one of my soul-sisters.

I am, in a very real way, the sum of both of my parents. My parents lost their first child, a son named Greg. He was born and died in 1977; I was born in the early part of 1979. I spent the first year of my life in and out of hospitals with various health issues (one of which nearly rendered me unable to walk). Needless to say, they doted on me - I was spoiled, not because of my own machinations, but because I was so desperately wanted and loved. Consequently, they kept me very close, the outcome of which is I was very sheltered and depended greatly on my parents for entertainment, with which they complied. I am a lot like my mom (they don't call me Barbara Junior for nothing), but I am also like my father in some very real, though very subtle, ways. Spending most of the day with them, riding around looking at houses and land, really brought home how much I love them and how much we have in common. It also reminded me that I want my life to be like theirs - rich in spiritual things, deeply in love with life, and simple. For as long as I could remember, I wanted a marriage like theirs (without a lot of the crazy my mom brings) - an honest and committed marriage forged in the simplicity and folksiness of the 1970s, built from a pure and strong love founded in the tumultuous 1960s. Bottom line: I was born at the end of the 1970's, but a lot of my sensibilities, I think, are from that era, and that is a big part of my tastes and desires...

The second part of that - an extended visit with my soul-sister Tara - was less simple and not a little uncomfortable. Not because of her, but because of what our conversations revealed. She's coming out of a 9-year relationship: divorcing after 2 terrible years of marriage. When I met her, she and the SOB she's divorced from had just started out, and she was an extremely happy and outgoing person, unwilling (and maybe even unable) to give a damn what anybody thought about her. That changed over the next few years - she was more bitter and less herself as time went by. When she finally got free, it was like water to a neglected plant: she bloomed, flourish, came alive again. And we talked some about that Saturday night, as well as many, many other things. And I got to thinking, while we were talking, how much I envied her, and I couldn't figure out why at first; then it occurred to me: she had found herself again. And I asked her about that, when she first realized it, and we talked about that, too.

I guess I feel like I've lost myself. Maybe I have in the complicated bullshit politics that is higher ed; maybe I have in worrying so damn much about things; maybe I have simply because I've neglected those essential spiritual parts of myself in favor of taking care of those problematic physical parts of myself. My mom made a comment not long ago about how she was just really beginning to figure herself out at 56 and that she envied me knowing myself well before I was ever an adult (which is true, I did). But I don't know that I know myself that well anymore, and I can't really figure out why.

I know this, though: I'm not giving up. I can find my way. I won't just wallow in self-pity over a shaky sense of self. I found a strong sense of who I was before I hit puberty - I can do it again, and I will do it again, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.