I’m Fifty now; I’d like to think my complexion stills begs the question. But, recently I’ve been feeling my age. It’s as if an entire Self has shed – I can see it behind me like some snake skin wrapped around a post. I don’t know what’s gone, but I know I’m somehow less and somehow more; but, definitely not the same.
Periodically, there’s a piece that runs on CBS, during a news segment – “Everybody Has a Story”. A reporter throws a dart behind him at a map of the United States. Where it lands, he goes. Then, when he gets there, he interviews a random name from the phone book. I’ve been finding archives of interviews like that in my own psyche – stories that are complex, tragic or compelling, waiting for a someone to come by and ask the questions … and listen.
I’ve been through some of life’s downsides in the last few years – deaths of animals, deaths of people, my Sister’s sudden, serious illness. The abrupt necessity for me to drop my career and writing lives to work 60+ hours per week for over a year – for the benefit of my sister, who needed my help. Now, the horizon is clearing, and I can see far enough ahead to see that very soon, I will be able to devote time to my career and my writing again.
Enter the parts of my psyche who have been waiting for someone to listen to their tales – to the fear, the weariness, the disappointments. To listen to the soldier in me who had to narrow her focus and march through territory – a territory that demanded everything, and perpetuated only Itself.
The soldier in me wants to speak now. And, I need to listen. So, I can acknowledge the sacrifice she made, and begin the integration of my psyche, my current life, and the future I long for.
Sometimes, if we choose to stop and listen to the parts of us that wait beside the road to be fed, we find that we fill ourselves in a way which is necessary to walk on. In this way, we Let Go, and can Let In. I am ready.
Katherine Bennett's Aesthetic Verbatecture 