Bestowed by Blood

Two months I spent at home. And two months I did not blog about being at home. It was a beautiful experience and hopefully soon I'll be ready to talk about it.

In the meantime, I am in a new place. A new state, for that matter, both geographically and mentally. Just today I received a package from my mother that included a few prints of family photos taken while I was back visiting my family. My mother, of course, in her infinite wisdom, included prints of myself with my two beautiful nieces (the loves of my life) and myself with my two older sisters (the image of the women I aspire to be.) I went to the bar tonight and when I came home, I got into bed holding those prints, and, after ruminating over those beautiful photos for a few minutes, I was overcome with the need to write.

My Nieces. I may never be the traditional aunt to those beautiful girls. The older girl, now nearly 8, was once a babe in my arms. Her mother was, at the time, younger than I am now, and, because of that fact, I had a significant hand in raising my precious Princess Ella. Her mother, my sister, was still discovering herself as a woman and needed time to develop. I, a sixteen year old girl with little else on her summer agendas, was the first to take this beautiful, precocious little girl to the library, and the first to spend significant portions of her day educating her and developing her into the woman she will one day become. I do not begrudge my sister this fact. Truthfully, I am thankful for the opportunity. Because of my lifestyle and my profession, I may never have the opportunity to be a mother; but, I will always have that sweet little girl, and the first years of her life, of which I was a key component. My Ella. She will always be my little girl. Each time I see her she has grown into more of a woman. In some small way, I get to take credit for that, and for that I am always indebted to my sister, Sonja. Ella is my legacy.

My sweet Mina. Ella's baby sister, now not quite two years old, she may never know me quite the way Ella does. Her face may never glow just the way Ella's lights up when she sees me after a long absence, but in her own way, Mina is becoming another strong, stubborn woman of my family. She is so smart, in such an analytical, technical way, and each day I crave the updates of what she is becoming. Before I went home to visit this summer, that sweet little girl had met me three times in her life. I can't take credit for her in nearly the way I take credit for her older sister, and still, I adore her just the same. May she be everything I'm not.

And then to the other photo - my older sisters, and I. When I looked at that photo tonight, it was truly a wake-up call. I had a moment where I said to myself, out loud, "This is you, Ann Elizabeth, at age twenty-four." My sisters and I have taken very different paths in life. One left school early, followed her dreams to California, and returned 8 months later after a failed relationship left her without recourse, at which time she met a man, fell in love, had a baby, married, divorced, fell in love, married, had another baby, found a stable career and now seems to be firmly rooted in a family life. The other took some extra time in school, graduated from college, moved to the Big City, found herself, moved back to Nebraska, found a stable job, fell in love, and will get married later this year. Both have taken what seems to be the "adult" course. I seem to be doing neither. I move around yearly, as necessitated by my career, have chosen a less-than-stable career path that is my PASSION, and have no thoughts of settling down romantically.

My brilliant, amazonian sisters and I could not be further apart, and still, my parents have yet to disown me. They support my every  move, sending words of love, encouragement and pride at every turn of my career. Can their love truly be so blind? Can I be so lucky? Is this unconditional love really what happens when you become parents? My success may never be as palpable and substantial, in a Mid-Western sense, as that of my older siblings, and yet, my parents still boast of us each in turn, for our remarkably different accomplishments. How, exactly, did I get so lucky?

I look at the photo of us three girls, and I am struck by this image of three drastically different women, who all manage, daily, to find their own serenity. My own serenity feels more and more chaotic, but can I judge the difference between mine and theirs? If nothing else, as I grow through each day I am given, I count myself increasingly lucky to be categorized, by name, with these strong women. I am of good stock - trials and tribulations be damned, the women of my family persevere. Do I deserve the honor that has been bestowed on me by blood?

Come hell or high-water, I intend to prove I have a right to give this life my all. My mother, my sisters, my nieces, deserve nothing less than that.

I've yet to be struck down by a bolt of lightning...

I don't know why this blog exists, really. I don't need you to read it. I don't need you to put your two cents in and comment on my life. I don't even know what I have to say.
 
Yesterday was a bad day. Probably my lowest in a long time. By the end of it, I found myself outside staring at the sky, having some sort of reality check with myself and some kind of a Come-To-Jesus (ha!) with whatever spiritual entity is out there.


Right, so, when you realize you're standing in your backyard, leveling with a deity, that's an interesting day. After you become aware of the fact that you're actually talking out loud, well, then you just start to feel crazy. But at the end of that conversation I felt more sane than I had in months.

I explained to whoever I was talking to that I don't know his/her name (henceforth referred to using male pronouns to avoid confusion) and that I resent the implication that whatever he has to say to me is filtered through the corporation of organized religion. Despite my disdain for his purported vehicle, I acknowledged his existence and then I called him out.

I suppose everyone I know who has a strong faith based in an established religion would pee their holier-than-thou pants if I told them I called out the higher power, but I'm tired of being fucked with and I reached my limit. So I told this unnamed being that in case he was wondering, I'm not Job and I certainly don't have the strength to be tested to the extremes that Job was. Should he feel the need to move forward with the test at hand, I will accept his test, but said test has the high probability of breaking me mentally and emotionally. Should that happen, he better be ready to accept my anger and resentment. I basically said, "Fine, ok, do this to me, but after it's done don't be surprised if I call you an asshole behind your back and don't call for a while."

I'm sure a huge portion of the world considers what I just did/said blasphemous, but frankly, I don't give a damn. I made my peace and I had some amazing epiphanies in the process. I'm not going to blather on about my epiphanies here because they were all revelations about me as a person and I'm not looking to go on quite that kind of saccharine bender just yet. Suffice to say, ultimately this unnamed entity held up his end of a pseudo-deal I made with him/her/it at the end of our conversation and today is a better day.

There's still some room for the bottom to fall out, in which case, I suppose I'll be suffering the consequences for speaking out of turn to a deity.