Part One

in which I return to the delayed realization of my disappearance

A hallmark of maturity is the capacity to delay gratification, to endeavor towards something knowing that the toil will pay off *at some point*, though that point may be so far in the future as to feel uncertain. 

I would say I hate uncertainty, but in actuality I’m just terrified of it.

I find Not-Knowing so loathsome that I have often said my greatest wish for Death is that upon it, if Nothing Else (Heaven, reincarnation, reunion with beloveds who have preceded me, etc) there is even a moment of omniscience, all questions simultaneously asked and answered, so my Earthly curiosity could be sated, after which I’ll willingly and happily submit to whatever the hereafter or no-whereafter has in store for a wretch like me (ha ha ha).

Such is my desire to escape my obligatory incarnate ignorance. Uncertainty is risk, which I also lack the stomach for. You can see how my aversions can preclude my capacity for delayed gratification, or at least explain why I’ve essentially white-knuckled it through every major life commitment I’ve made- except for marriage before and after the first year of parenthood (which is hard when you’re young, broke, and emotionally stunted as a result of being raised by a pack of Wire Mother Wolves, but that’s not the subject of this article). 

A lot of people say they want things out of life that they don’t want badly enough to actually make happen if it requires making decisions, taking risks, or in any way disrupting the trajectory they’re already on- as much as they may complain about it or find it unfulfilling, frustrating, inane, or completely out of alignment with who they feel they truly are or want to become, they cling to it desperately because it’s the Devil They Know. 

I am absolutely one of these people, or I would be if not for my Jupiter Rising husband dragging me (lovingly carrying me) kicking and screaming (whimpering, retching, and wringing my hands) through every major life decision (and most minor ones) of these twelve years. 

Except for the one we’ve just made. 

Earlier this year I was idling through Stories when a homeopath I follow there posted an elicited response which included the remedy “Falco Peregrinus”. I felt a little— what do you call this? A ping? A tug? A God-wink?— and looked it up, having never heard of it before. Of course it resonated (the She-Wolves are howling, despite my efforts), I ordered some, took a dose, and immediately forgot I had done so, as the most aligned and synchronistic foundling remedies tend to go. 

Have you seen the OA? It was like when the misfit crew does the dance during the school shooting and Prairie dies in one reality in order to jump back into her ‘real’ timeline. 

I had the strangest sensation of feeling like I had been living in the same manner as I do in the majority of my dreams, with the Me in Front, acting out the dream, saying the words, going through the motions, playing the character of the DreamWorld, and the Me in Back, aware of the Dream but behind the glass, a sort of Anthropologist-of-Self taking note of what I’m dreaming and theorizing on why I’m dreaming it, what it means, how it connects to my waking life, and only occasionally becoming lucid and merging the two into One Noticing, Reasoning, Present Actor, My Back-In-Front-Self usually being pulled back to Back by my DreamWorld contriving to- not attack me, Inception-style, what does it mean that Christopher Nolan’s psyche reacts to his Becoming Lucid with hostility, should we fear for him?- convince me I’m not dreaming and therefore lucid by making it rain- “If I were dreaming, I wouldn’t be able to feel the drops on my skin,” (except I can taste, feel textures, and smell in my dreams, as it were), “I can only bounce very high, I can’t sustain flying” (obviously not a thing irl, unfortunately??) until I’m convinced and fall to the Way Back like I’m lying down on the bench seat of my Mother’s Light Cypress Green Plymouth Voyager, completely and blissfully oblivious to the goings-on of the rest of the vehicle despite being contained and carried by it. 

I realized, all at once, a cascade of tributaries flowing into one swirling vortex, pulling me down through the center of my entire concept of self. Let’s invite the wolves now, let’s placate them to quietude with an offering of acknowledgement: everything I thought I wanted or needed or didn’t want or didn’t need was unconsciously in response to, or in rebellion of, or in reconciliation with my Wire Mother and my internalization of her snarl as the Voice Inside My Head. 

Pathetically [archaic, mostly], I wanted to Prove Them Wrong, and in order to do that, I needed to…it was always changing— volatile, as I am wont to be, for better and worse. But usually involved something like making a lot of money independently, which is ridiculous because success via career is always what was expected of me, whereas I am (delving into Fuck You territory here, a little hackles-raising maybe) a staggering success in the way my Metallurgic Matrilineage neither achieved for themselves nor so much as even seemed to hope for me; at least, it was apparently not worth much mention in some twenty Odd years. 

I knew I was addicted to my phone, but this is when disgust, disillusionment, Neptune leaving Pisces set in. In what was, looking back, a single protracted moment of epiphanic torture/bliss, I came to Certainty: that my desires were not my own; that I was still being riled and ruled by the apparition of something I had slain myself; that I did not want to continue with Path of Venus; that whatever the reason we came to Kansas City, it was not to live here or in the way we had thought we wanted to when we made the decision to move; that Instagram was ruining my life; that my marriage, home, and family (I repeat myself) were miraculous triumphs I fail to adequately recognize myself for or devote myself properly to; that I was ready and willing to submit to my lot in life without needing to enrich and aggrandize myself to Win or Be Worthy of what I never received; that social media is a bitter juice not worth the squeeze, and most of the successful people on it are truly pathetic [derogatory, but with ardent *com*passion]; that I now lacked any direction in or desires for life except to piece myself back together and give what remained to my husband and children. 

(I have since come to less potent feeling on the subject of social media, after a period of disengagement and returning, sort of, to a difference in both utilization and the goals for doing so that preclude it. It can both be true that social media can be a wonderful thing and that many people, myself included, have difficulty not using it as an analgesic and self-harm tool. I probably have more to think and say on this subject at a later time, though woe betide me for thinking I have any thoughts that haven’t already been spewed in abundance by others on the subject in the year 2025.)

I communicated almost none of this to Garrett, so you can imagine how disconcerting it was for us both when he, after a particularly lovely day of watching me practice German, play chess, read books, laugh, snuggle, and cook with the children, lovingly said: “I wish you would decide to just Be the Mom,” and I burst into body-wracking sobs, howling at the Moon of my desolation. 

After revelation, we drifted out to sea for months, coming up with haphazard halfhearted nothings of a plan, over and over again. Should we buy or build a house nearby? Move to one of the coasts? Head for the other state we considered upon first leaving Pennsylvania? Buy an RV and travel around the US for a few weeks, six months, a year? Wait for investments to realize, interest rates to drop, a sign from God? We gave ourselves over to indecision, by turns lazily and frantically, knowing that despite how much we wanted to find It, It did not particularly want to be Found. 

And then all of a sudden It did.

END PART ONE