Serial Suicide

OK, no panic allowed.  As I've said before, NOT going to do it, but ....

Was thinking the other day about how often I've had to re-invent myself, how often I've abruptly changed direction, outlook, what I do and don't do, and that phrase jumped to mind.  I've killed who I was many times, but since it's *me* i've killed over and over, that makes me a serial suicide.

What am I talking about?  Well, the highlights would be hiding my hippie-dom during the 60's & 70's only to drop the whole drug life for a near-decade of involvement with spiritualism.  Yes, kiddies, I mean the woo-woo talking to the dead stuff, though it was never about asking great aunt Maude what the secret ingredient to her sweet potato pie recipe really was.  It was asking spirit guides for TRUTH about the universe and our place in it.  That me vanished overnight as I remade myself into a fundamentalist Christian.  For more like two decades, during which some really "interesting" things happened. (Remember the Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times."  Well, we did.) Then there was the Big Fuckover (there's really no other way to say it) that was revealed when we found out our oldest friend and pastor had lied to us, manipulated us and the whole congregation, gotten us to move across the country under false pretenses, and set us up for inevitable failure.  Bye-bye Little Susie Fundie.  Hello, darkness and despair, confusion and chaos.  Couldn't show that to the rest of the world, though could I?  I mean, I had a job - an important one supporting the DoD.  Had to appear normal, more or less.  So inward wounded and perplexed, outward Career Woman/Mom (leave out the soccer, he played American football instead).  So, a decade-ish of that, and the Small Fuckover - got hustled out the door at work because I wouldn't play games with the Big Boys.  (No, I don't mean sex, I mean office politics.)  Bye-bye Career Woman, hello ... aimless, anchorless, meaningless - except there was that granddaughter whom we were raising.  She was my meaning, the reason I kept on despite the physical and mental pain (I've been a chronic pain patient for the last decade and it ain't fun).

Then the biggest blow of all - though it was absolutely the right thing to happen for many reasons, the granddaughter left - adopted by her uncle and aunt.  Bye-bye any hope of a life.  Hello, Nothing.  I cannot express the grief.  I can't tell you how many times the utter emptiness, the Nothing-ness of it all overwhelmed me so powerfully that my knees literally buckled beneath me and I fell to the floor, weeping.  No, weeping isn't strong enough.  There is this pain, this loss that comes from so deep within that it's not weeping.  It's a visceral thing, a sound that comes from your soul.  It can't be held in; it forces itself out, bangs on the barricade of your teeth and your false front of Making It OK until everything splinters and it screams through the shards of who you were, taking most of you with it.

I had to search, not for a reason to live, but for a WAY to live, a means of surviving from one minute to the next.  Had to - despite being 3 hours away, my Precious Treasure still needed me - still does, so I'm still here, now thankfully only 20 minutes away.  But that was another re-invention.  Killed the obedient, submissive Good Wife and just told the man I adore that I was going - he could come or not, I was outta there.  Bye-bye, Good Wife, hello, Independent Me, on my own for the first time ever.  And doing OK with it.

So, now?  Well, he followed me after several months.  So here I am, unwilling to give up Independent Me - for the first time in my life, I had set some boundaries, said "this is mine and no, I won't let you have it, thank you very much", carved out a place where I could find the artist that wants out, the songwriter/musician, the creative me -- but I haven't the freedom any longer.  More than that, I don't have a place, a space that's mine any more.  Oh, I love this man, I do, I really do.  Been with him since I was 17 and he was 16.  But I want ... not more per se, but different.  I want a way, a place, a space where I can put out the things I want to surround myself with, the art, pictures, history that inspires me and feeds that part of me that I had discovered and was trying to gestate.  Bye-bye, Who I Thought I Might Get a Chance to Be.  Hello ... I don't know what. Something less.  Something much less.  And I don't like it.

Don't know the answer.  I do know I'm sick and damned tired of being a serial suicide.  Wish I had hope that there *is* an answer.