Feed the Giant
Reinventing oneself in the time of COVID
The hours of this past week have been consumed by the exhausting, frantic rush to produce something… anything… tangible on which to build a future. The new school year begins next week, and I am more aware than ever of the need to settle the unknowns in my daughter’s life. To create a home for her has been my greatest joy, to spread roots and ground us in place. There are many parts of parenthood where I have failed, but this has been the measurable success of my tenure. I have spent more hours than I can count attempting to predict the unforeseeable, to account for every variable, to make backup plans for the backup plans, so our stability remains intact. And for what? There is so little I can control now.
Still, I try. So unwilling to surrender. Frantically, I try.
After weeks and weeks of brainstorming, of hatching new ideas and spectacular imaginings for the future, I have arrived back at square one. Tonight, as I sat threading my daughter’s sewing machine, I encountered just enough silence to grapple with my own thoughts, and I realized the bitter truth of this situation. The truth is that I am deep at war with myself, engaged in an all-out battle over what I think we need for the future and what I actually want… what my gut tells me is actually right.
The always-in-control part of me is fighting to the death to have things sorted out. That part of me has looked at real estate in nearly every market within 500 square miles of here. It has applied to jobs that pay half my normal salary and jobs that pay triple. It has contemplated entrepreneurial enterprises small and large. It has continued to move forward with last year’s plan to pursue a Ph.D. in education. It has networked and attended virtual workshops and watched self-starter youtube videos and networked some more. It is exhausted.
And then, there is the other part of me, the part that had been successfully tempered by the ever-growing demands of adulthood and the weariness of life. That part of me seems to have woken up like a raging 5-ton giant on the bottom of the ocean seeking light for the first time in two millennia. I don’t know if such a creature exists, but if it did, I think it would perhaps feel something like my soul right now.
Here is what I understand now. That gripping anxiety in the pit of my stomach stems not from the unsettledness of my situation. Rather, it stems from the exact and precise fear that it will again be settled. That I will settle. That I will go back to the hurdling-through-space juggling act of full-time working and full-time single-parenting. That I will answer every single demand of myself except for the one that is the truest and most deserving to be answered. That time will again pass by me at the speed of light. That… and here it is… that I will never get the chance to step into my true purpose.
Sounds like artist-talk horseshit, right? I mean, what even is that? A true purpose? Real life means putting your head down and doing what needs to be done to get where you need to go. Raising a kid is a life of purpose for crying out loud! And anyway, teaching is a meaningful vocation and should, therefore, provide all the purpose a person needs in life. Especially when that person has been charged with feeding and clothing and sheltering another person.
This is the inside of my head right now, folks.
But…. that panic I keep waking up to…. articulated, sounds like this…
My brother died before he had known his own greatness. I see the immensity of his unrealized gifts pressing against the vestiges of his life. It seeps through the snippets of his writing, his letters, his journal entries and even his hastily scrawled notes. He had big thoughts and beautiful ideas. He had no idea the profundity of his own mind. He was still working his way toward who he was going to be, still ripening.
I turned 38 last week and almost in the same breath, a deep perturbation and dread came over me. What if I don’t have enough time to become the person I am meant to be? What if I don’t have the chance to do this thing that I most love to do? What if I take another job simply to pay the bills (WHICH IS WHAT RATIONAL AND RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE DO!) and something happens to me along the way and this story… my story… never gets told? What if the immensity of this thing that burns inside of me remains wholly untouched- stifled and suppressed- while I do what I need to do to be the provider I want to be?
I had a job interview today, the first in three months that pays more than minimum wage. It is a good job by all accounts, but it is no longer a job that I am good at. I have the skills and the degree. But I no longer have the heart. There are jobs you can show up for, regardless of your mood or heartspace or energy level. And then there are jobs that require you to be buoyant, to lift others up and carry them along with you, to give and give and give. Teaching is one such job. I have so little left to give right now. Still, you do what you have to do, right? I should be grateful. If I get this job, our lives will go back to normal, and I’ll be able to sleep again at night.
Except that maybe I won’t. And maybe I’m praying that I don’t.
I can’t help but feel I’ve been barking up the wrong tree this whole time, chasing the ghosts of a life that is no longer mine. There are a thousand ways to exist on this planet, in the finite space of time we are allotted. I have to find a way that makes this existence worth every remaining breath. I have to believe that we each have purpose. What else could this life be for, if not to realize that purpose?
Maybe I’ll get the job. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll buy a shack in the woods and make my teenage daughter live off the land with me. Or maybe, just maybe, I will take a leap of faith and step into this thing that I believe is meant for me. At this exact moment, I cannot say. But I do know that I have to find a way to feed the 2-ton giant that just woke up. Should it return to sleep, I’m not sure it will ever emerge again. So maybe now, it is time.
