Making the break
24 July 2011 06:30 AM Categories: Writing prompts
Yesterday’s internal premise was about growing up. Not the physical process, the way that cells divide and hormones push changes, but the internal process, the maturity of mind, the separation of self from others, the necessary break. I realized that this was a break that I’d never really made, that a lack of childhood made me cling to childhood, that I’ve been wandering around in an adolescent (or worse: toddler) miasma half the time. Once you notice that, there is no choice but to grow up and it’s a relief, to let go of the need to be parented, the need to be seen by the love object, seen and supported like a babe in arms.
Lest you think that this means I’m “over it,” that what happened to me doesn’t matter anymore, I have to say that this just means I own it and the results, the hidden fears, the needs that I must meet by myself. I still cry about it, cry about her and what she went through, cry for her clueless sad parents who couldn’t help her, cry for the way she’s spent years being controlled in part by a past that is long gone. Her is me, a version of me, and I embrace her, but I also tell her that the time has come to let go of adolescent views on love and its expression, to embrace herself and what she wants, to reach out without being crushed when other people don’t automatically reach back.
I no longer stamp my feet when things don’t go my way, but I do have a way of disappearing when angry, of putting up a shield, of deciding that the mortals around me don’t deserve my delicate thoughts, that they are part of the problem and my solution is to disappear, to send out a cloud of ink and anger and blame. Now I feel the feelings, watch the others, separate myself from their reactions. I differentiate.
I take responsibility. Maybe I take the wheel, or control my own destiny. The clue is deciding how to balance connection and independence, to really feel that they don’t need to be separated, to keep on acting “as if.”
From a photo prompt (above). Image by Jane Underwood of the Writing Salon.
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. Unless I tell you otherwise, this is the original 12-minute prompt edited only for clarity and typos.
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