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Sometimes I feel that I'm slipping away more and more...I don't know what I want. I don't know what or who I'm supposed to be or who or what I want to be anymore. I'm lost. My children are grown, they're adults, and while I'm still their mom, I'm having a difficult time navigating "mom-hood" at my age. I want my adult children to make their own choices and live their own lives, but it's still kinda weird finding yourself in a place where you're not needed like you once were. My greatest happiness in life has been being a mom to my kids, baking for my kids, cooking for my kids, being a school room-mom for my kids, tucking my kids into bed at night, reading them stories, or singing Teachers by Leonard Cohen or Joey by Concrete Blonde trying to get them to go to sleep for the night...I dunno...I dunno...But now they're grown, and I'm going through perimenopause, and nothing is how it once was...Not that that's a bad thing. Life is nothing but a series of changes, but sometimes, the changes seem to happen at a speed you're not prepared for...We have only this small moment in time, this small moment of human consciousness...how do we really want to spend that tiny moment in time?

We are all twinkling little stars in a vast universe, comprised of our own experiences. We are not separate from the Universe, other people, non-human animals, plant life, or all that surrounds us but rather part of it, born of it.

You remind me of an antiquated merry-go-round. The kind you would see outside of a KMART, or at Showbiz. Put a quarter in and it spins you around in circles for a minute, playing a happy tune. But, eventually, no matter how many quarters you invest, the song never changes, the running in circles never changes. It just becomes tiresome. The ride becomes slower, and, somehow, agonizing, and the song slows down to what sounds like nothing but a garbled mess, and the beating of a dead horse, repeating the same thing over and over in an attempt to keep alive something that has changed, whether for better or worse.

It's these moments. These moments where everyfuckingthing comes together and feels so right yet it also feels so discombulated and foreign. What do I do? Where do I turn, who will understand? I'm so fucking tired of expectations that I'm not in a place for nor prepared to give. But what do feelings matter in the big scheme of life? Do we adhere to the bullshit boundaries for the sake of others, or do we adhere to our own boundaries that offer freedom? When life is so consumed with what everyone else wants, it feels selfish to stand up for yourself and your well-being. It feels "wrong" to tell others no when you know that despite the ways in which you're so fucking tired, you have to keep pushing on...

I sometimes wonder, when people do and/or say things that are blatantly stupid or idiotic, if they are really that ignorant or if they just play the part because they believe it absolves them of their responsibility to be accountable for their words and actions. I mean after all, if they're really just stupid we shake our heads in awe of their stupidity and and move on under the assumption that person just doesn't get it.

To deny the truths of pain is to deny humanity, compassion, empathy, and understanding. None of us are perfect; we all struggle with something. You can deny your pain or accept it. Acceptance is much simpler. Denial requires excuses and shifting of blame. I don't hold myself unaccountable for my choices; there are many times in my life where I should have stepped up, but there were also many other circumstances to factor in. We can only control what we can control in life. And, no matter how much control we may think we have, there will always be circumstances beyond our control. That's why understanding and empathy are so important. The ability to recognize that we can not expect more from others than we can give or do. The ability to recognize that someone else may be suffering in ways that we haven't had the misfortune to. However, we must use our own suffering as a guide in understanding the suffering of others...we may not all have the same experiences, but humans are all capable of human emotions, however chaotic and misunderstood they can often be.