our winter shadow

A tin of magnetic words sits on top of our fridge, covered in dust. Yesterday, I pulled a handful of words out and selected one at a time, usually randomly, and placed them in whatever order seemed right. When the poem felt done, I stopped. This is what resulted. The meaning is vague, but it resonates with me, somehow. I can see my own power and my mother's power in it, expressed in different ways. Maybe it is about the essence of motherhood? 

i am so free from you

I'm up late, reading blog entries from people like Upsi and Kiki and Mulderfan, and this is what my soul sings:

"I am so free from you
I am so free from you
I am so free from you."

It's hardly poetry, but it's what resonates through me.

I remember being a preteen and teenager, and wanting more than anything to be free. Not free in the sense of being able to come and go as I please, or to live outside my parents home, as I imagine many teenagers feel, but free in the sense of free to be myself. Free from tyrrany. Free from censorship. Free from being told what a bad person I am.

I don't have to be near you.
I don't have to be at your beck and call.
I don't have to attend you on the days you deem important for no reason other than my biological relationship to you.
I don't have to pretend that we're "one big happy family".

Family estrangement is considered such a sad thing in our society, but nobody considers how absolutely wonderful it can be from the point of view of the person escaping an oppressive, soul-sucking relationship.  It's the kind of wonderful that makes you want to spin in a full skirt in the middle of a breezy meadow.

Divorcing my mother is the best thing I have ever done, bar none.

As for my father? I'm sorry he chose to tether himself to such a woman. He had potential, perhaps. It was wasted on her. He made his choice, and I made mine.

My choice is to be ME, and free.