Friday, September 25, 2009

Elizabeth Gilbert and Me

She's wrong. Elizabeth Gilbert. She's wrong about that child thing, right at the beginning of Eat Pray Love, that part about the mom not caring about colicky crying but just beaming all the time because she loves her baby so much.

I kind of hate when non-moms write about what they imagine to be true about motherhood.

It tends to be simplistic nonsense.

I loved my son, love my son, sometimes swooningly - but light does not flow from his pores, I did not and do not beam every moment I am awake in his presence. I hated being tired all the time. I still hate being tired all the time.

On a daily basis, I mourn the loss of my solitude. I resent my descent into cliche-dom - the narrowing of my circle to these walls and these two males, the softening destruction of my body as my last big sweaty exercise fades into distant memory, the clouded and narrow quagmire that used to be a clear spiritual path.

And here is this Lady, this Liz, who got PAID in ADVANCE to TRAVEL the world and WRITE a BOOK about it. Travel for a YEAR. And now Julia Roberts is going PLAY her in the movie of that book.

I HATE.

I HATE that THAT is NOT me.

This is one of the refrains of my ill life, the unhealthy river that flows through my dark side -

"How did SHE get MY life????"

Envy.

It knows no boundaries. It has become my companion, again. I stopped paying attention to my spiritual fitness, rounded a mountain, and there she was. Here she is. Envy. She looks like illness personified, but one of those grossly attractive illnesses - Sharon Stone in Casino kind of ill, right after the glory and heading into the descent. Eyes glassy but still focused, smelling like expensive perfume put on two days ago, clothes still expensive but crumpled. Envy.

She is my best self made grotesque.

And when I am fit, she is a good teacher.

What and Whom am I envying?

For they do have something I want - something I am blocking, somehow, by not pursuing or by denying, by lazing or by....

I Want To Write.

I Want You To Read This.

I Want This To Be My Job.

I Want This To Earn Me Money.

Lots Of Money. Enough to buy a home, food, good schooling for my son, and travel.

I Want This To Be My Daily Work.

I don't know how. Or in what way - romances, memoir, novel, essays. I don't know how.

So I'll just write. That I know how to do. Like this.

And Open the Door to Having THAT Life.

I Write For My Living.

I Write.

I Live.



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