Introspection
Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 7:27 am
This is an article which I wrote when feeling in a very black mood, as does tend to happen when one is battling massive depression; in this case it was profitable, as I managed to sell it to a local women's magazine. I still write alot when in a mood; I have found I seldom write when I'm happy, yet I am capable of writing happy things when depressed; however, this is not a happy piece. Feedback not necessary but welcome all the same.
[b]Introspection [/b]
She had never married. She didn’t know why or why not-certainly the opportunity had been there-a few times. Then again, in the whole scope of her life, how important was it? She thought that, looking back on her life, if there was any she regretted, that might be it.
Why that one seemingly missing element, she wasn’t sure. Her life had been otherwise full, or it appeared to be when she was in a positive mood. Not being married hadn’t prevented her from having children. She wasn’t sure how that would impact her two offspring as they set out on their own lives, but she had given them the best start she could. Whatever they decided, wherever their lives would lead them, was all up to them.
She was a child of the Sixties. The Psychedelic years. Tail end of the baby boomers, the beginning of Generation X. In the circles she had traveled, children of the Sixties seemed to do more…drink more, drug more, search more. They worked more too, trying to find that impossible dream. Memories of the Cleavers floating around in the recesses of their minds, filtered through the experiences of real life drove them to reach for-what? Did any of them really know? Torn between the media's model of the ideal family and the reality of life. What price was being paid by these lost waifs of the Freedom Decade?
Most of them had graduated high school just in time to be unleashed on the Eighties-the Me Decade. Well what better place to go on a fruitless search for themselves than in a decade that was focused inward? Everything was about, well, Me. Flamboyant fashions, big hair-all designed to draw attention to ‘me.’ Hairspray companies and makers of neon spandex made their fortunes in the Eighties. Lace had never experienced such a popular comeback as it did gracing the Madonna wannabes of the Eighties. Everything was big-the hair, the belts, the music, the dreams. How then, did coming of age in such a focused decade cause so many of them to be lost?
They had probably all started out with similar hopes and dreams when they were younger. What had happened to her generation? Many of them were divorced at least once; several more like her had never married. They may be cohabitating with a partner, embracing that new independent coupledom introduced in the Sixties-but how many of them were exactly where they wanted to be? How many were truly satisfied with their lives? How many of them were having these conversations with themselves as she was, with middle age pounding at the door demanding admittance?
Certainly enough of them had survived and made it in one piece-success, family, and home-but then there was the others like her, refusing to be pigeon-holed. Why was that? What was different between them? Were there pieces missing or just pieces as yet undiscovered? Had she closed a door when she should have left it open?
Evidence of Sixties babies was everywhere, this apparent stigma wasn’t geographically selective. Children of the Sixties seemed to stand out like fluorescent sticky notes. Entertainers in rehab; upstart news personalities, educated revolutionaries, activists for innumerable given causes. All of them searching for-something. What was it? What did they all seem to feel was missing in their lives? Maybe it was just a matter of putting together all the pieces of a puzzle begun in their formative years. Of course, in order to put the puzzle together, all the pieces must first be assembled in one place. This was fine if one lived in a Milton Bradley puzzle box, but you know life isn’t that simple.
Images planted in their infant subconscious by the emerging media, allowed access by young parents enthralled with the pictures being beamed into their home every night. No thought given to what Walter Cronkite was showing them on the nightly news. What impact did the hopelessness of Vietnam, the surreal future of a man on the Moon, and violent street riots have on these young, inquisitive minds? Did the detached images of death, destruction, conflict and outer space form a constant need to ask why? Was this the start of the seemingly endless search many of us seem to be on?
Then again, maybe it was something in the Seventies; the continuing onslaught of even more media images as the popularity of television grew. As the power of media grew, it became apparent that with this powerful tool advertising agencies could shape whole generations, introduce new fads, all to their own financial gain. Study groups sprang up, their sole purpose being to pigeon hole us into convenient demographics. All to sell advertising space.
They chose to call us Generation X. Why? Was it because we were still searching for what we were supposed to be? We didn’t like being called Generation X, but when asked for an alternative, well-that would require more searching and asking why on our part. So Gen-X we became. We got our own magazine, television shows were written for and about us. All to make us buy into the way the media said our society should be. This in turn would line the pockets of their advertisers. Maybe we should be grateful. Someone finally figured out a home for us.
So much had changed over her lifetime. So many images flashed by, all mixed up and conflicting it was no wonder that many of her contemporaries were out there flitting around from one extreme to another, battling their way to the top like an artist on the Top Forty.
Forty. The word jarred in her mind. The reason-the cause-for all this introspection. A number she would much rather ignore, if only there was some way to deny its very existence. Instead it shouted in her head-FORTY-if she ignored it, would it go away?
She sighed long and deep, expressing her resignation to the Dark Event as she had named it. She hadn’t felt this way at thirty. Thirty seemed so young now. Forty. Both of its syllables were like stabs to her heart. A slow death for many of the plateaus she had dreamt of reaching as a younger girl. She had remained hopeful through her twenties; even in her thirties she had held on to some hope. But now-forty-with fifty not far behind, well that was almost too much for her to cope with. The years had, and still were, passing much too rapidly. How she wished there was a way to slow them down; then again, would slowing them down make any difference in where she ended up?
She supposed she should be grateful to have made it to forty-actually, almost forty. She wasn’t forty yet, and if she could deny it for just a bit longer, she would. She thought of classmates and friends who hadn’t lived to see twenty, never mind thirty or forty. Yes, for that she supposed she should be grateful. She knew that if she looked harder, she could find a myriad of reasons to be grateful. That, however, would mean looking at the positive, which she wasn’t in the mood to do at all. She was in a dark mood, dreading the arrival of the Dark Event.
She found sardonic comfort in clinging to the belief that the Dark Event did not officially take place until the exact hour and minute of her appearance in this cruel world. Until that exact time, she wasn’t forty. She pictured herself going about and stopping everyone’s clocks. The ridiculousness of that almost made her smile. She could always try locking herself in her room and really ignoring the Dark Event, but she knew that her loving offspring would pound on her door along with a black forty and plead with her to come out and celebrate. She didn’t want to celebrate. She wanted to kill the number forty. What was so hard to understand about that? Didn’t they see that Jack Benny was onto something when he refused to admit to any age over 39?
Lying on her bed in the dark, which matched her dark mood brought on by the Dark Event, she reached over and flicked off the radio. John Michael Montgomery trying to convince some woman that he was her Prince Charming did nothing to improve her mood. If anything, it glaringly pointed out to her just how jaded she had become when it came to love and relationships. Something else to carry with her into her next decade of existence. She may not truly regret never having married, but she certainly knew how she felt about romance and men. She allowed the weight of the walls she had spent years perfecting crush any ideas her heart may get about having a man around to share her life.
Her walls-built on the foundations of deceit, broken promises and lost dreams, were high and strong. Brave or stupid would be the man who thought he could conquer them. A few had tried, succeeding only in adding another layer to the top with their own deceit a crowning glory. With each layer, she grew colder. The façade of the walls was almost flawless-very few were permitted a glimpse past the outer face. The one the world got to see. Was she protecting herself or them? Yet all the while, the little girl who had dreamt of happily ever after pounded on those walls, wanting to feel the very love that the grown woman was convinced didn't exist. With love came pain and vulnerability, something she'd had enough of.
How did she come to be in such a place? Was it because in her experience, whenever she allowed her passions to run free the result was the same? Different circumstances, almost the same results every time, with the constant being her, so therefore the cause must also be her. They say there is someone for everyone; well where is he? For that matter, would she even know him if she ran him over? Not that it would matter at that point. Did choosing to be individualistic really matter that much? How much was really a choice and how much was resignation to being alone? Just what is-or was-her heart’s desire in this matter? Perhaps now was the time to start hating being born a Gemini.
She reflected on that. She seemed to have lots of time for reflecting, these days. It seemed the thing to do while awaiting the arrival of the Dark Event. It appeared to her that after her children, the most important thing in her life was her writing. A place to release all the passions and feelings she kept prisoner behind her well built wall. Self-preservation without a doubt; it was certainly safer than letting any man closer than friendship. She realized that as with almost everything in her life, she had circled back to where she had started her thoughts tonight. Marriage-or in her case, the lack of such an event in her life had been where this circle began, if she recalled rightly. The circle; it was such an important symbol in life. The never ending wheel of life, it carried on cycle after cycle. Why did everything seem to move in circles, and why did she seem to end up starting all over again? Well, aside from the obvious wheel of life circle. What was it that she kept missing with each cycle? Even when you thought you were branching off on another fork in the road, chances are it was the same circle, you just saw it from a different angle.
“So, prodigy of the Sixties,” she asked herself. “Where will we go once the Dark Event has passed? Shall we continue on, or shall we start anew, so that when we reflect on life when we are facing the Twilight Event, there are no regrets? Or shall we cling to everything we can, and burden our journey as much as possible, even though it won’t stop or ever slow down the abominable passage of time?”
“Well, we haven’t reached the Dark Event yet, so we have time to do a bit more searching, as we children of the Sixties are so good at doing. I’ll let you know my decision once I get there,” was the answer she heard from inside the walls.
“Oh, well one more question then,” she asked the voice. “How will we know when we get there? Will there be a sign saying Dead End, The End, or ‘and they lived happily ever after?” She would probably put her money on The End, with Dead End in close second, and happily ever after nothing more than a childhood dream fading far in the distance.
copyright 2003 by me under my real name
[b]Introspection [/b]
She had never married. She didn’t know why or why not-certainly the opportunity had been there-a few times. Then again, in the whole scope of her life, how important was it? She thought that, looking back on her life, if there was any she regretted, that might be it.
Why that one seemingly missing element, she wasn’t sure. Her life had been otherwise full, or it appeared to be when she was in a positive mood. Not being married hadn’t prevented her from having children. She wasn’t sure how that would impact her two offspring as they set out on their own lives, but she had given them the best start she could. Whatever they decided, wherever their lives would lead them, was all up to them.
She was a child of the Sixties. The Psychedelic years. Tail end of the baby boomers, the beginning of Generation X. In the circles she had traveled, children of the Sixties seemed to do more…drink more, drug more, search more. They worked more too, trying to find that impossible dream. Memories of the Cleavers floating around in the recesses of their minds, filtered through the experiences of real life drove them to reach for-what? Did any of them really know? Torn between the media's model of the ideal family and the reality of life. What price was being paid by these lost waifs of the Freedom Decade?
Most of them had graduated high school just in time to be unleashed on the Eighties-the Me Decade. Well what better place to go on a fruitless search for themselves than in a decade that was focused inward? Everything was about, well, Me. Flamboyant fashions, big hair-all designed to draw attention to ‘me.’ Hairspray companies and makers of neon spandex made their fortunes in the Eighties. Lace had never experienced such a popular comeback as it did gracing the Madonna wannabes of the Eighties. Everything was big-the hair, the belts, the music, the dreams. How then, did coming of age in such a focused decade cause so many of them to be lost?
They had probably all started out with similar hopes and dreams when they were younger. What had happened to her generation? Many of them were divorced at least once; several more like her had never married. They may be cohabitating with a partner, embracing that new independent coupledom introduced in the Sixties-but how many of them were exactly where they wanted to be? How many were truly satisfied with their lives? How many of them were having these conversations with themselves as she was, with middle age pounding at the door demanding admittance?
Certainly enough of them had survived and made it in one piece-success, family, and home-but then there was the others like her, refusing to be pigeon-holed. Why was that? What was different between them? Were there pieces missing or just pieces as yet undiscovered? Had she closed a door when she should have left it open?
Evidence of Sixties babies was everywhere, this apparent stigma wasn’t geographically selective. Children of the Sixties seemed to stand out like fluorescent sticky notes. Entertainers in rehab; upstart news personalities, educated revolutionaries, activists for innumerable given causes. All of them searching for-something. What was it? What did they all seem to feel was missing in their lives? Maybe it was just a matter of putting together all the pieces of a puzzle begun in their formative years. Of course, in order to put the puzzle together, all the pieces must first be assembled in one place. This was fine if one lived in a Milton Bradley puzzle box, but you know life isn’t that simple.
Images planted in their infant subconscious by the emerging media, allowed access by young parents enthralled with the pictures being beamed into their home every night. No thought given to what Walter Cronkite was showing them on the nightly news. What impact did the hopelessness of Vietnam, the surreal future of a man on the Moon, and violent street riots have on these young, inquisitive minds? Did the detached images of death, destruction, conflict and outer space form a constant need to ask why? Was this the start of the seemingly endless search many of us seem to be on?
Then again, maybe it was something in the Seventies; the continuing onslaught of even more media images as the popularity of television grew. As the power of media grew, it became apparent that with this powerful tool advertising agencies could shape whole generations, introduce new fads, all to their own financial gain. Study groups sprang up, their sole purpose being to pigeon hole us into convenient demographics. All to sell advertising space.
They chose to call us Generation X. Why? Was it because we were still searching for what we were supposed to be? We didn’t like being called Generation X, but when asked for an alternative, well-that would require more searching and asking why on our part. So Gen-X we became. We got our own magazine, television shows were written for and about us. All to make us buy into the way the media said our society should be. This in turn would line the pockets of their advertisers. Maybe we should be grateful. Someone finally figured out a home for us.
So much had changed over her lifetime. So many images flashed by, all mixed up and conflicting it was no wonder that many of her contemporaries were out there flitting around from one extreme to another, battling their way to the top like an artist on the Top Forty.
Forty. The word jarred in her mind. The reason-the cause-for all this introspection. A number she would much rather ignore, if only there was some way to deny its very existence. Instead it shouted in her head-FORTY-if she ignored it, would it go away?
She sighed long and deep, expressing her resignation to the Dark Event as she had named it. She hadn’t felt this way at thirty. Thirty seemed so young now. Forty. Both of its syllables were like stabs to her heart. A slow death for many of the plateaus she had dreamt of reaching as a younger girl. She had remained hopeful through her twenties; even in her thirties she had held on to some hope. But now-forty-with fifty not far behind, well that was almost too much for her to cope with. The years had, and still were, passing much too rapidly. How she wished there was a way to slow them down; then again, would slowing them down make any difference in where she ended up?
She supposed she should be grateful to have made it to forty-actually, almost forty. She wasn’t forty yet, and if she could deny it for just a bit longer, she would. She thought of classmates and friends who hadn’t lived to see twenty, never mind thirty or forty. Yes, for that she supposed she should be grateful. She knew that if she looked harder, she could find a myriad of reasons to be grateful. That, however, would mean looking at the positive, which she wasn’t in the mood to do at all. She was in a dark mood, dreading the arrival of the Dark Event.
She found sardonic comfort in clinging to the belief that the Dark Event did not officially take place until the exact hour and minute of her appearance in this cruel world. Until that exact time, she wasn’t forty. She pictured herself going about and stopping everyone’s clocks. The ridiculousness of that almost made her smile. She could always try locking herself in her room and really ignoring the Dark Event, but she knew that her loving offspring would pound on her door along with a black forty and plead with her to come out and celebrate. She didn’t want to celebrate. She wanted to kill the number forty. What was so hard to understand about that? Didn’t they see that Jack Benny was onto something when he refused to admit to any age over 39?
Lying on her bed in the dark, which matched her dark mood brought on by the Dark Event, she reached over and flicked off the radio. John Michael Montgomery trying to convince some woman that he was her Prince Charming did nothing to improve her mood. If anything, it glaringly pointed out to her just how jaded she had become when it came to love and relationships. Something else to carry with her into her next decade of existence. She may not truly regret never having married, but she certainly knew how she felt about romance and men. She allowed the weight of the walls she had spent years perfecting crush any ideas her heart may get about having a man around to share her life.
Her walls-built on the foundations of deceit, broken promises and lost dreams, were high and strong. Brave or stupid would be the man who thought he could conquer them. A few had tried, succeeding only in adding another layer to the top with their own deceit a crowning glory. With each layer, she grew colder. The façade of the walls was almost flawless-very few were permitted a glimpse past the outer face. The one the world got to see. Was she protecting herself or them? Yet all the while, the little girl who had dreamt of happily ever after pounded on those walls, wanting to feel the very love that the grown woman was convinced didn't exist. With love came pain and vulnerability, something she'd had enough of.
How did she come to be in such a place? Was it because in her experience, whenever she allowed her passions to run free the result was the same? Different circumstances, almost the same results every time, with the constant being her, so therefore the cause must also be her. They say there is someone for everyone; well where is he? For that matter, would she even know him if she ran him over? Not that it would matter at that point. Did choosing to be individualistic really matter that much? How much was really a choice and how much was resignation to being alone? Just what is-or was-her heart’s desire in this matter? Perhaps now was the time to start hating being born a Gemini.
She reflected on that. She seemed to have lots of time for reflecting, these days. It seemed the thing to do while awaiting the arrival of the Dark Event. It appeared to her that after her children, the most important thing in her life was her writing. A place to release all the passions and feelings she kept prisoner behind her well built wall. Self-preservation without a doubt; it was certainly safer than letting any man closer than friendship. She realized that as with almost everything in her life, she had circled back to where she had started her thoughts tonight. Marriage-or in her case, the lack of such an event in her life had been where this circle began, if she recalled rightly. The circle; it was such an important symbol in life. The never ending wheel of life, it carried on cycle after cycle. Why did everything seem to move in circles, and why did she seem to end up starting all over again? Well, aside from the obvious wheel of life circle. What was it that she kept missing with each cycle? Even when you thought you were branching off on another fork in the road, chances are it was the same circle, you just saw it from a different angle.
“So, prodigy of the Sixties,” she asked herself. “Where will we go once the Dark Event has passed? Shall we continue on, or shall we start anew, so that when we reflect on life when we are facing the Twilight Event, there are no regrets? Or shall we cling to everything we can, and burden our journey as much as possible, even though it won’t stop or ever slow down the abominable passage of time?”
“Well, we haven’t reached the Dark Event yet, so we have time to do a bit more searching, as we children of the Sixties are so good at doing. I’ll let you know my decision once I get there,” was the answer she heard from inside the walls.
“Oh, well one more question then,” she asked the voice. “How will we know when we get there? Will there be a sign saying Dead End, The End, or ‘and they lived happily ever after?” She would probably put her money on The End, with Dead End in close second, and happily ever after nothing more than a childhood dream fading far in the distance.
copyright 2003 by me under my real name
