Me, Undone

I’ve been haunted by dreams of children in my arms—the sensation of connection and overwhelming love stays with me, even as I wake. I assume it has something to do with the approaching anniversary of my mother’s death. She wanted so badly for me to have children. It was often the topic of our weekly conversations. She offered to come live me for the first year—I told her I wasn’t ready. I thought I had so much time. I’ve oscillated over having a baby since she died. Sometimes the urge to reproduce rises up to suffocate me—and other times I am acutely averse to the thought of giving up my freedom. I love crawling out of bed at 12:00 in the afternoon on lazy weekends. I love traveling to any given country at any given time. I love partying with fabulous boy queens until 4 in the morning. I’m sure that there are innumerable joys that come from parenting. But there is also an intense amount of fear. The fuller and purer the love--the deeper the sorrow. Many mothers have suffocated from

I cried. If you can hear the sound of her voice, know this, we are not alone.

I can’t seem to shake my predilection for traveling. For weeks upon weeks I’ve been dreaming of Indonesia. I’ve fallen madly in love with the Bali--it's ornate temples and magenta (the one in the Crayola crayon box) flowers. My desire to travel to Bali did not come from reading Eat, Drink, and Pray . Although I found Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk on creativity to be rather fascinating, I threw her book to the floor after the first chapter. Her exaggerated literary voice was so abrading—I almost broke out in hives. I may not fancy Gilbert, but alas, I am following in her steps. I guess I see myself in Gilbert--it is somewhat disturbing. Like me, she is a woman who does not know what she wants (despite her recent sequel). She, I, am a vagabond, a pseudo nomad—wandering around from job to job, degree program to degree program, marriage to marriage, country to country, bed to bed. I am the complicated for absolutely no good reason kind of woman—unsatisfied with life presented. I