After I had my twins, I felt confused and isolated in a way I hadn't after my first child. I found blogs. More specifically, I found "mommy blogs" and the community that they create. I can't say if that community helped me through anything in particular, but it certainly gave me company as I sat in a small, cold office alone missing my children, feeling isolated, and wondering, for the first time in my life, if somewhere I had taken a wrong turn.
I thought I'd found my niche. I wrote. I think for two years, but I'm not sure because, as happens when we are tired and careless and not paying attention, I somehow lost every word I wrote during that time.
I thought I'd found my niche. And then I thought I didn't. And then, I thought I had nothing to say that anyone wanted to hear. Maybe no one does.
The funny thing about writing, though, at least for me, is that even after I'd given it up, it didn't let go of me. I can't remember the last time I put words on a page. But I write constantly in my mind--while driving in the car, while cooking dinner, while lathering and rinsing and repeating. The other funny thing about writing is that it cries for external validation. It seems less real when left unpublished. Somehow, those words are validated not by the writing, but by the reading.
Maybe no one does want to hear. Maybe I don't have a niche. Maybe I just need some external validation.
Which brings me here. To this space. Wishes and lies--dreams and stories. That is what I love. That is my niche, even if it does file neatly into someone else's category. This is where, at least for now, in this fleeting, ephemeral moment (as all moments are as thinly tenuous as the breaths we take), I will write.
I am a stepmother to one, biological mother to three. I am tired of doing what I'm supposed to. I am an endearing disaster on my best days. I am not as endearing on my worst. I married an extraordinarily patient man. Together, we dream.
