I don’t know any more. If I ever did. My self image has been bound up for too long in external imposed ideas and now that I have what I think I wanted, I’ve rather lost site of what that leaves for me to be.
I thought I wanted to go to blogcamp, but then I realised, as I read the tweets this morning, that I have no interest in tweaking or changing this blog. Someone said the best advice is to let your personality shine through – surely that’s all my blog is? Parts of me shared in words, examined, interrogated, held up to the light of readers eyes. And sometimes what they see is very different to what I thought I was showing, but that’s OK too.
I seem to have misplaced some parts of me. I have no room in my life atm for the sardonic, sarcastic character that I expressed behind the bar, working security, or even when coding. The times when I knew that I was genuinely good at what I did, often better than most other ppl. And I enjoyed that. It was arrogant, sure, but when I code I know that I’m good at it, particularly at system coding.
Now I’m not sure what I’m good at at all. I don’t feel the same kind of confidence in parenting that I do when I’m faced with a page of objects – not surprising, I’m not sure anyone does. But I miss that part of me, that carefree, terribly sure part, that never needed to think twice before coming up with the answer, that was right more often than not, that other ppl looked up to, relied on, probably didn’t like very much at all.
There’s no room for sarcastic quips when you’re raising children. It doesn’t do them or you any good. You need to be softer, kinder, more cautious, more patient. Someone else always comes first, someone else always has more urgent needs than you do. It’s what parenting is about, subsuming self in another human being’s needs, and glorying in their achievements.
I love my children. I adore my children. I wanted my children. But is it wrong that every now and then I want me too?
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