Who's To Say?
I can't count my blessings like I count years. I can number my friends among them, and say with confidence that a blessing is anything bright and beautiful that you don't deserve and didn't dare ask for.
Nights like this, there's a distant drumbeat. My wings are beating, or that's my heart. I want to run, run as far and as fast as I can. I don't know, will never know, whether I'm running to or from. That would require knowing where I'm going, and I barely know where I've been.
I'm 29. I'm not going to be any older than this when I am a hundred. I will still be that first kiss girl, that idealistic stagefright stuffed-animal strawberry girl, the girl who will always laugh at sparrows fucking and hold kittens very carefully and play with sharp things just a little too freely and say things she really means and can't quite live up to -- or live down. I'm the one who can be trusted to have but not to hold, who can't do time or place, but who will never forget the appointments I don't keep. I'll be the same damn person twenty, fifty, seventy years from now.
I like me. I'm flawed. Fragile. I like that in other people, and I've come to appreciate it in myself, because it reassures me that I'm human (and there have been times I've doubted). But I'm afraid something will happen to me between Now and Then to kill what I am. I've never felt strong; now less than ever.
By whose measure do we live? Have I had much or little, in my short span? All I can do is measure what I've done against what I wish to do still, that endless yardstick Fate uses to smack me on the knuckles every time I tempt her. I'm thirsty for life. All the pain I see around me only makes my own demons howl to be fed. I can't even give more life to those who deserve it. I'm as powerless as they are. I do what I can to heal their wounds, but I can't unmake them no matter how I wish I could. And I have my own wounds to lick.
I'm going to spend the next year living. All those things I wanted to do before 30? I have 365 days. Will I get it all done? Oh, hell no. But I want to get a run on it. I want to give myself a head start, a fighting chance. Not because I think it's going to be too late, soon, to do these things, but because I want time to really enjoy them.
I spend so much time not certain of anything. I'm never sure what's right, whether I'm giving offense by doing or omitting something critical. I'm never sure of my own strength, whether the well-being I feel on nights like tonight will last or if pain and inadequacy is my resting state.
It's stupid. I want to talk to my mother, but I know if she were here, I wouldn't say any of these things to her -- she wasn't someone you showed your underbelly to, ever. But it's frightening and odd to have a birthday when the person from whose body you were cut isn't there any more. I'm a woman; I measure my life by the women who have come before me. My grandmother and mother are gone. I'm standing on my own, really on my own. Even my father, who is so strong, is no longer the authority he was; in the stick-biting primitive world I come from, two is more powerful than one, and the longtime alpha pairs of this family are now severed. We're moving off into our own satellite groups, spearate packs.
There are three ways of acquiring seniority in a wolf pack, when the alpha pair is broken by death or crippling injury. If rank is apparent, you can simply inherit the post. If there are several contenders within one generation, you can fight until you become alpha, which only works if your pack acknowledges your authority, and if you want it. Or you can strike out on your own, a lone wolf, proclaim yourself alpha of whatever you can, and hope you meet another lone wolf on the way.
I'm the latter. I'm alpha female of my pack of two. I have to be a grownup now. And there are nights when that scares the crap out of me, just like it thrills me sometimes, knowing the only person I have to answer to is me.
My extended pack of family and friends are mostly lone wolves, too, in singles and pairs. I don't see most of them often. I'm solitary, even more than most, and we're a motley lot, not always suited for the uses life tries to make of us. We're misfits, and some of us aren't even loveable. But by all that's wild I am glad we're here, and I'm glad to be in the company of wolves.
And that's the thought that I'll carry to bed with me tonight, and turn over in my teeth while I wonder what to do with this leap year I've been given. This brief, lucid reprieve, like one long howl in the dark.
Nights like this, there's a distant drumbeat. My wings are beating, or that's my heart. I want to run, run as far and as fast as I can. I don't know, will never know, whether I'm running to or from. That would require knowing where I'm going, and I barely know where I've been.
I'm 29. I'm not going to be any older than this when I am a hundred. I will still be that first kiss girl, that idealistic stagefright stuffed-animal strawberry girl, the girl who will always laugh at sparrows fucking and hold kittens very carefully and play with sharp things just a little too freely and say things she really means and can't quite live up to -- or live down. I'm the one who can be trusted to have but not to hold, who can't do time or place, but who will never forget the appointments I don't keep. I'll be the same damn person twenty, fifty, seventy years from now.
I like me. I'm flawed. Fragile. I like that in other people, and I've come to appreciate it in myself, because it reassures me that I'm human (and there have been times I've doubted). But I'm afraid something will happen to me between Now and Then to kill what I am. I've never felt strong; now less than ever.
By whose measure do we live? Have I had much or little, in my short span? All I can do is measure what I've done against what I wish to do still, that endless yardstick Fate uses to smack me on the knuckles every time I tempt her. I'm thirsty for life. All the pain I see around me only makes my own demons howl to be fed. I can't even give more life to those who deserve it. I'm as powerless as they are. I do what I can to heal their wounds, but I can't unmake them no matter how I wish I could. And I have my own wounds to lick.
I'm going to spend the next year living. All those things I wanted to do before 30? I have 365 days. Will I get it all done? Oh, hell no. But I want to get a run on it. I want to give myself a head start, a fighting chance. Not because I think it's going to be too late, soon, to do these things, but because I want time to really enjoy them.
I spend so much time not certain of anything. I'm never sure what's right, whether I'm giving offense by doing or omitting something critical. I'm never sure of my own strength, whether the well-being I feel on nights like tonight will last or if pain and inadequacy is my resting state.
It's stupid. I want to talk to my mother, but I know if she were here, I wouldn't say any of these things to her -- she wasn't someone you showed your underbelly to, ever. But it's frightening and odd to have a birthday when the person from whose body you were cut isn't there any more. I'm a woman; I measure my life by the women who have come before me. My grandmother and mother are gone. I'm standing on my own, really on my own. Even my father, who is so strong, is no longer the authority he was; in the stick-biting primitive world I come from, two is more powerful than one, and the longtime alpha pairs of this family are now severed. We're moving off into our own satellite groups, spearate packs.
There are three ways of acquiring seniority in a wolf pack, when the alpha pair is broken by death or crippling injury. If rank is apparent, you can simply inherit the post. If there are several contenders within one generation, you can fight until you become alpha, which only works if your pack acknowledges your authority, and if you want it. Or you can strike out on your own, a lone wolf, proclaim yourself alpha of whatever you can, and hope you meet another lone wolf on the way.
I'm the latter. I'm alpha female of my pack of two. I have to be a grownup now. And there are nights when that scares the crap out of me, just like it thrills me sometimes, knowing the only person I have to answer to is me.
My extended pack of family and friends are mostly lone wolves, too, in singles and pairs. I don't see most of them often. I'm solitary, even more than most, and we're a motley lot, not always suited for the uses life tries to make of us. We're misfits, and some of us aren't even loveable. But by all that's wild I am glad we're here, and I'm glad to be in the company of wolves.
And that's the thought that I'll carry to bed with me tonight, and turn over in my teeth while I wonder what to do with this leap year I've been given. This brief, lucid reprieve, like one long howl in the dark.