eaglesnest

Ya know, sometimes there are moments when emotions overwhelm us, when - for me anyhow - I suddenly feel I NEED to just lay down or slide down a wall or throw myself upon some surface and just weep uncontrollably. I never do.

Well there have been twice in my life I was depressed and I did in fact find myself laying on the garage floor while doing laundry, or struggling not to walk into the cold dark waters of the Northern Pacific. I won that fight due to whatever sanity remained and a saint who hovered always an arm’s length away to yank me back from any precipice.

Recently, there have been more such instances - just overwhelmed by the emotions that want their way with me. Today, playing on the floor of a new mama friend’s house with her sons & mine, I was rocked by the urge to flop down face first and just sob beyond crying into her throw rug. That I would soon be creating a life on my own for my children as she was doing for her sons had grabbed hold of me more deeply than I dared believe.

From some odd outside view, I think rather logically how made-for-TV melodramatic that would be, yet it feels, it is soo much more real, so natural, so internal. And I am sorry I hold back, allowing my rational mind to steel my frail emotional body.

We women are taught, trained, ingrained to repress our true emotional outbursts, our real immense needs to express the deep seeded angst, fears, horrors & otherwise not sunny feelings that accompany real life as a woman, as a mother. There is no permission given to fall helplessly on the floor of a stranger or friend’s or even sister’s house and weep, needing to unleash the insane floodworks which are damned up as we move thru the daily world, managing, organizing, structuring the world as all of everyone knows it.

{truth is known that mamas are the very underlying foundations of every damned thing in human civilization}

AND if as a woman I can not cry inconsolably over anything without being viewed as weak or lacking or frick’s sake “hysterical,” imagine, if you can you who have not wombs, what constrictions are upon me as a mother. Add unto that being a strong single mama who is the everything between destitution & starvation for my children and prosperity, How can I, as that character, dare even consider for an instant falling apart, being overridden by emotions, positive or negative?

Where would we all be if mothers gave in to their natural instincts to just NOT be whole & together and calm & collected and assured and all that crap?

I think of my own mother who did in fact give herself over to that Dark Side and I think of Susie’s mother and Marian’s mother & my other mama sisters who have emotional & mentally imbalanced mothers. I’ve seen what happens when a mother gives herself permission to NOT be there for her children.

As much as I desire to crumple, I will not allow that indulgence to creep in and gain any toehold in my psyche. I will not permit those unguarded cracks in my wall. My children will not see me buckle under the weight.

Behind my bedroom door at 3 am is another land entirely. Should I be blessed with a partner to shoulder the world long enough for me to cry it out, then he might see that reality of my life one day.

As I typed those last words, I hesitated. I do not want to give the impression that I am waiting for some strong capable man to let me have a moment of weakness as if I’d feel so taken cared of, or provided for or protected. I do an injustice if I paint that picture. I could have easily written “should I be blessed with a real true mama friend in the same time & space I might lean on her long enough to unload the stones from my soul.” It was not about a man, it was a statement of feeling embraced by a safety net of the right person to free my inner pains to. It was about sharing the load and giving myself permission. For me that only happens with a few select family of friends, and only in a place of feeling safe to be unshielded.

I only give myself permission to be anything less than Mama in the deepest darkest alone of wee morn or in the shelter of love.

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