Day One—Singapore: Monday, June 17, 2013

I guess the timing is perfect to write it all off as my ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ midlife crisis, and I haven’t really investigated why I am so resistant to that particular label. I don’t feel like I’m in crisis, I don’t feel like I somehow stumbled into midlife while I wasn’t paying attention, and I somehow feel secretly superior to whining, wondering, self indulgent women who feel like every insight they have is profound, and their story would matter to anyone. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I think I am wrong on every single account.

I turn 40 this year (very clearly midlife and crisis material), I woke-up this morning with a combination of defensive ego and obvious defeat about the chapter of parenting that has come to an abrupt end with my daughter flying across the entire country to find the things I couldn’t show her and learn the things that I couldn’t teach, all the while, carrying with her all the scars that I created or couldn’t prevent, AND I lay next to my love and boyfriend of 2 and a half years who (I tell myself daily, if not many times a day) I am fine with never marrying because he ‘doesn’t believe in it’. Even I, an obvious narcissist in radical denial, has to admit that I may have fallen prey to the ever horrifying idea that I am ‘normal’ and all my grandiose ideas of myself are simply more ways to keep me safe, isolated, and not accountable to the inactions of my life…go figure. Average has been the worst kind of four letter word (err…well, it’s not actually four letters is it? maybe ‘simple’, ‘regular’, ’plain’, ‘typical’, ‘common’, ‘normal’?  They all SUCK! Ok, so there is my four letter word! Feeling average Sucks!)

Today I sit alone in a hotel bathroom at 4 am writing this because after almost 40 years of truly knowing my passion and truest meaning in life I still only give myself brief stolen away moments to myself to scribble the words that spill over the edge of my ‘real life’ that keeps me blanketed in the security and praise that are still paramount to the insecure, eager-to-please, terrified of failure child/woman that I still am.  For everyone afraid that they have never found their passion, or have been afraid to look…how incredibly mortifyingly shameful is it to absolutely know, and still be too chicken to try. Well that’s me. Maybe I should just embrace that the “yellow bellied chicken liver” is my totem animal (side note: can a liver constitute an entire animal? Who coined that phrase anyway?), or maybe I should just sack-up and do something (and how many times have I said that?).

Today I wake still shielded in the judgments that I still pretend not to make over all the weak, fragile, self-absorbed, arrogant, broken, narrow-minded, thoughtless, childish, stupid, mean people in the world that are SO different from the strong, empowered, compassionate, fun, forgiving, loving, accepting, vibrant, energetic, generous, happy, playful, appreciative, protective, honest, kind, and soul-searching person that I am.  Right? Or more fittingly, ‘Yeah Right’ (stated dripping with sarcasm) I sit, knowing all along, that I am all of these qualities (and having the sinking feeling that I have an even stronger affinity with the dark manifestations), but somehow I’m even more afraid of being equally both good and evil.  Then I would be, yet again, faced with the horror of being…average.  Equal, normal, usual, regular, fine, common…miserably mundane. The true fear of my over achieving, constantly prevailing, and success driven life is unveiled like the obvious elephant in the room.

What if I am not special?