Me, I Want Some Glitter Glue...

My last 2 pennies for the night:
 

I haven't done any Christmas shopping. I don't imagine I will do any, really, beyond purchasing a wooden puzzle for Bea (she's wanted it for a while) and something small for Sebastian. I've been sort of scanning myself for guilt about this and I can't seem to find a drop of it. I HAVE been hearing, however, pressing, nervous voices from others around me about "getting gifts for the family", "give us your lists", and "aren't you going to buy your husband anything??" I can honestly say that I'm not bothered by any of this, even though the buzz these comments give off is getting louder by the day.

I've been busy--heck, this whole family has been busy--and we're really quite financially tied down by an unpaid internship that has kept all our spending tightly in check. We have a tree that grows in a pot, year after year, that we decorate w/handmade ornaments. We used scraps of craft foam to make bizarre little alien mistletoe and it looks awesome (glitter glue is sublime, really). I plan on engaging in some furious gift-baking for a few folks that come through on cloudy days and some cheap wine for those few that never come through but expect a gift because of their family status. As for presents for my kids? They get me, covered in paint and flour and chocolate (and glitter glue) as we craft our Christmas on the cheap this year and they get it.

 The above picture was taken 2 years ago, when we decided to spend a little dough on Christmas...At Goodwill.

Smashy, Bashy, Crashy, I'll Be Better in the Morning

I’m so scared to open a new Word document; whatever might show up next on the screen may be completely specious and illiterate.  M says I should write more. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps I’ve been wasting too much time playing computer games that destroy my mind, making my sense of creativity soft and immobile. It has been so long since I created. I play my ukulele, I took my tap classes, but alas, I create nothing. I create absolutely nothing since I’ve created my children.

They’ve taken—or rather, I’ve taken, as I’m the one responsible for making them—my will to create, my joie de vivre of creation out of my bones and have used it for their elaborate train rail set-ups, their wooden block houses, their doll beds from cardboard boxes. They freely scribble on an easel with markers and crayons anything that pours forth from their small hands. I’m jealous of this. I can’t remember the last time I’ve created anything beyond dinner; lately even the most basic meals have been rushed, sloppy affairs where I’m trying to create something out of leftovers that have twice been re-animated.

How am I to get back to the flush of spasmodic existence that was my creative late teens and early twenties? Is it possible to recapture it somehow, like a rare butterfly, or is it ethereal, little more than dust motes in the afternoon sunbeams that seem to only be noticed by my cat?  Is this the end, or the limit of my intentional creative abilities? My brain feels so slow—so lackadaisical to spur forth knowledge that used to gush out of my once-eloquent mouth, that I feel my creative time is up.  If you’ve had children, maybe you feel the same. If not, well…I won’t say not to procreate, but I will say that you should plan to get all your good ideas out now, rather than wait for the slow mental decline that will meet you once the umbilical cord is forever severed.

Even at this very moment, as I look back at what I’ve written, I’m tired. I don’t want to read this, I don’t want to continue this note, this essay or whatever the hell it is…My brain is simply at its worst. My discipline is nil. All this at a time when most people are imagining their New Year’s Resolutions, their plans for a better start, a new life, a new endeavor. Sarcastic? Hardly. This is realism. This is my creative life now, and while I assume it has settled in, just like Milo when he reaches the Doldrums, I crave a Tic-Tock Dog to invigorate me once again.

Who or what will be my Tic-Tock? Certainly not my husband, and most certainly not my children. I’m not invigorated by my family members on a creative level anymore; the last time I was, I wrote a crappy blog that I felt no love for. Essays that mean little more than wasted digital space. I will not brag about my children teaching me peace or love or honesty or any other bullshit that parents brag about in other social networking sites. I’d feel more comfortable writing openly about the really awful stuff—the depression that comes with raising two children, the depression that settles in from the decision to stay at home full-time, rather than explore a desirous career, the depression that comes from knowing that I will never be the person that I thought I might like to be.

This life, at this time, is filled with little flecks of light that only manage to escape the majority of dark matter constantly swirling around…I used to keep waiting for the good stuff to happen: return of my libido, children sleeping through the night, a husband that doesn’t fall asleep putting the kids to bed, a room of my own to work in, a chance to pursue my shh-oh-so-secret desire to act, but alas, I’m still waiting and I’m tired of waiting. In the immortal words of B.B. King, “the thrill is gone.”

Post-script: Yes, therapy IS good. CBT is awesome, but if you can't see a piece of writing for what it is--a captured moment from my brain, spewed forth from my fingers onto the little black keys of the laptop--and you fear for my existence or some other silliness you've cooked up in your mind about me, then you simply need to stop worrying and start reading other people's cheerier bloggy bits of fluff, rather than dwelling on mine.