Writing has always been my friend; that one constant loyal companion, always willing to listen whenever the joy or pain within becomes too much to bear. I have always known my voice, heard it clearly in my head and at times too loudly. For as long as I can remember it has been that one thing that truly defined who I really am; putting pen to paper and bleeding blue or black on crisp clean pages.

Lately now, I wonder if what I am experiencing is a sort of writer’s block. The blank pages keep taunting me, goading me to somehow dare to soil them. How I long for the sound of that first crumpled page, balled up in my ever wrinkling lonely fist. What is it that has dammed up all the once free flowing rivers of emotion that I bathed in before Motherhood?

Desperately, I search within each miniscule memory, hoping to somehow unleash that part of me that has become numb; a numbness borne of single parenting three post-teenage sons for two decades.

This malingering numbness began soon after my divorce. It escalated when I had worked 12 hour shifts, six nights a week, taking care of elderly people, so my sons could have a mother around in the daytime when they needed her most. It got worse every tired morning that I rushed back home to make breakfast and then hurriedly drove them to school. Then I’d rush back home, clean up the apartment quickly, so I could lie down for a four or five hour nap that I utilized in place of a good night’s sleep. It became number still, every time I slapped on that damn, peel-n-stick happy face, that pseudo-smile that I had learned to wear whenever we went out to eat and I said I was not hungry because I couldn’t afford to eat, too. Sometimes, it is just so damn hard to get beyond all the pains I suffered, to ensure that my children never would know that life can be really, really tough.

Motherhood, that is so far from the light, cutesy, saintly perspectives. More like an ever deepening dark pit where you hang from a fiber of your last thread; a place where you wake up each day still aching from a pain that a good night’s sleep just can’t heal. Somehow, I am still there in the muck and mire, knee deep in the decomposition of each part of me that I’ve had to abandon along this vast glorious journey. In spite of it all, somehow, Motherhood still feels like a blessing in disguise.

By Julie Ann Richter

Labels: Julie Anne Richter

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