For some of us this was the point in our lives where we saw our parents as actually people. Now when we were 18 and saw our 40 something old parents getting divorced and mom wearing a mini skirt when you didn’t know she had legs before …..well we get it.
It’s a little different for me. You know me and my aversion to clothes and all.
I spent 18 years being someone other than who I am. I am not saying its a bad thing, it was and is the most amazing and wonderful thing in the world.
I didn’t know who I was before I became a mother though. I was out here on these streets wiliding and low key trying to kill myself and it was the pregnancy I chose to not abort which gave me a purpose. It gave me a reason to live. It gave me hope.
When Bonnie took ill, I also became a daughter. Sure I was always her daughter, but it was very different when she came out of the rehabilitation hospital.
When you met me Constant Reader, that was the definition of me. I was mother. I was daughter. Sure you got a peek for a time when I also tried to be a ‘woman’, but we know that didn’t work out with that person.
When my family was stolen from me, aside from allllll the rest that went with it, I found myself without a purpose or identity. I had to spend a lot of time figuring out if I would ever be enough.
I have a friend who struggles with that and even though she calls me miserable, she’s not as far along the learning curve with ‘enough’ as I am. I hope she gets it, but I will love her even when she doesn’t.
For the first 2 years at least after the incident the struggle was to get back what was taken. There wasn’t a lot of thought about who I was going to be in the process. I knew who I was… or I thought that I knew.
It was ironically finally leaving the shelter and getting the apartment which began to show me, I can and will be something else. There is a version of me in her infancy which is ‘enough’ without having to be any other definition.
One of the well known things about me is that I am opinionated and outspoken. Once I finally found a voice I would not shut up. Yes there was once upon a time a version of me who was quiet. She gone though.
One of the wonderful and frightening things about aging is that the older I get the less fucks I give. It’s wonderful because the weight of peer pressure and societal judgment is heavy. It is frightening because as you know I only had a fraction of a fuck to start with before.
I can – and do – still code switch. I still have a personal standard of conduct I adhere to even if it is not obvious to the masses. I am free though, for what feels like the first time in 46 years.
I can travel without having to figure out how to find people to care for 2 people with special needs with opposite desires. I can fuck who I want without the guilt of making an injured partner feel like less of a man. I can buy a pair of totally sparkly and useless silver high heels [budget permitting] and not feel guilty that it’s not going to someone else in the house.
Sure I still have limitations, like aforementioned budget, but my life is my OWN without qualification. Being who I am I will still consider other people and other things at times, but for now I get to focus on me, just me.
It’s led to a lot of decisions and goals you will hear about upcoming. Yes there will also be pictures.
I got to thinking of freedom though as I navigated some of my online groups. What shackles some of those members are not what I wear. I’m not a pick me, even if I will at some point get picked. I can maintain my rules of engagement and have the patience to allow someone who is a good fit for ME to first use those rules and then obliterate them. Yes this version of me is attracting a good amount of submissive males, but I also know that at some point a life of service will return to me, so yes those rules are temporary because he/she will have their own which I will happily bathe within.
As I watch the people, places and things around me I can have gratitude that no, that doesn’t have to be me, and fortitude to demand that it never become me.
I am free.
It feels wonderful
Get you some.
Aphrodite Brown