This week I have been stripped, nerves open and bare and pulsing with the electricity of being overly exposed to the world. There is a throbbing in me and I am consciously, actively, resisting the compulsion to burst, forth and forward into whatever is in front of me.
I have always needed an extravagance of silence and solitude to feel at my ease in this world. And, for a very long time this was relatively easy to do - keep quiet, be amenable, smooth the way for others, stand back, smother skill and talent. Hide. As a girl it was always so easy to hide: I hid in books, behind books, in my studies, up my favourite tree, behind the loud exuberance of those around me.
But now, twelve years into mothering two children who crave constant company and conversation, twelve years into being hauled into the world on a daily basis, twelve years into this relentless noise and responsibility and obligation and visibility, and I think that I no longer have any layers left to cover and soften and protect the very fibres of my self.
I am a frayed electrical cord, sparking - a danger to self and to others. Or … I am a frayed electrical cord, sparking - finally without barriers to setting something out in the world that honours my ambition. Because what risk is there, really, as exposed as I already am? What risk is there when I am already facing all of those feelings I feared if I dared to really try something? Shame, failure, inadequacy - well, I have twelve years of weathering these and I am still standing. Frayed, sparking, but still standing. Still breathing. Still able to revel in the heady scent of wattle and the desires it calls forth.