metaphorically speaking

I seem to be suffering from the proverbial writer's block. Though in my case it would be more accurately described as a thinker's block. I’ve hit a really dry spell – dry, and aimless.

I said once I could endure anything if I just found the proper metaphor in which to think about it – and that is what I am searching for just now - a metaphor, or even a rubric to describe my life, to center it and animate it. I feel fragmented, no longer all of a piece.

Yesterday in church we were given the opportunity for a few quiet moments to “confess our sins of omission and commission. . . “ I felt like maybe, given enough time, I could manage to confess my sins of commission, but I felt as if my life were one big sin of omission. What could I even say about fifty years worth of omission. What are the words to even make that kind of confession? Do they exist?

A large part of my current angst revolves around my family, by which I mean my children. I have young adult children, which causes me look toward a childless future and think, who will I be when the children are gone?? (How cliche. . . just like a women's magazine article.) It is frightening, but creates a restlessness as well. I still have a lot of energy left, as well as a sense that the clock is ticking more loudly. Where should I invest this limited store?? What have I never done that I still want to do?

But then I remember I have a kindergartener and a fourth grader who still have YEARS at home; a seventh grader who needs lots of guidance and reassurance and love. . . I don’t know how to be the right sort of mother for them all - how to adequately deal with the older ones leaving and doing young adult things while still reading Beatrix Potter and Charlotte’s Web often enough. I feel I am not being a good mother to anyone these days – the thing which has always made me feel like my life was justified – no matter what other sins of commission or omission I was guilty of, at least I was a good mother. Right now I don’t feel like a good mother to any of my children. . . and I don’t know how to fix it. It’s not as simple as, “I need to focus more on . . . . ". I can’t focus on anything.

I am similarly torn between friends and loved ones in the US – how to stay close and somewhat involved in the lives of people I love and hope to not be forgotten by, since one day we will be coming back. . . . not as strangers, I hope - and the need to make friends here and become involved in a real life, not a temporary assignment in Malaysia. I feel like I am split down the middle - no, that is too clean. I feel like I am shredded in a hundred bits - each too small and ragged to be any good.

Making friends has always taken a huge amount of emotional energy for me; I am by nature a recluse, I believe, and I have to force myself outside myself to spend time with people, to make connections. I have always felt guilty about this; all my life I have been conscious that I am not a good friend. I have always known people perceive me as aloof and rude. I know my own heart, that I have kindly intentions toward nearly everyone I know; I just can’t muster the emotional energy sometimes to be with them. I wish I could love everyone from afar. . . be a good friend, a nice, caring person from the relative quiet and solitude of my own space. Which sounds pretty selfish when you think about it. I just wish I enjoyed socializing a bit more. . . some people I know would always choose company over solitude.

I think that is why the venue for most of my friendships and my “ministry” if you can call anything I have ever done in my life that, has been my own house. I am usually quite happy to invite people in – I just find it very hard to go out to meet them. I don’t mind having a houseful; I’m happy to have houseguests and extra people for dinner. Anyone can live at my house. I can (usually) deal with people stopping by for coffee, but I have consumed a hundred cups of coffee with friends in my own kitchen for every cup I have taken in someone else’s. . . and I have consumed many cups of guilt as well for being who I am and not one of my more open, friendly, sociable counterparts. How is it one can get so far in life and still feel like Woody Allen: “My one regret in life is that I am not someone else. “

So I don’t have anything to write these days because I can’t figure anything out and I am wasting precious hours not doing anything well. I am swirling in a whirlpool looking for some anchor to grab hold of which can help me to stop going in circles; some way to climb out, but I have not even seen anything yet that looks stable or remotely comforting. I have to keep looking if I hope to ever feel firm ground beneath my feet again, but I’m feeling a little discouraged about the prospects just now.

I began by saying I felt dry – now I’m in over my head. If there’s anything I hate it’s a mixed metaphor. This is a measure of how lost I feel right now. What was it the Apostle Paul said in his flawless King James English: “Oh wretched man that I am. Who can deliver me from the body of this death?” I know there was an answer, but it doesn’t make sense to me at the moment. I can’t get past the question