The Seven Year Itch

'We Live in the Past when We Don't Move Forward'

A very simple little diddy. But oh, so hard to follow. Like right now, for me. I'm on the verge of BIG changes. These happen about every seven years like clock work, whether I'm ready or not. Seven years ago I got divorced. Seven years before that I gave birth to my son. Seven years before that I was entering Graduate School, moving towards the end of a toxic relationship. You get my drift.

Picture realizing that you have just stepped off a very familiar, although dusty old path and on to a wet mossy rock beside the river and suddenly you can't turn back around. One foot is sliding towards the rushing water; the other is going to give any second and into the cold you WILL plunge. Yes, a few miles down the waves will get calmer and yes, you DO hold on until it does. You may go under, but you hold your breathe and bob back up again. For almost 56 years now I have plunged and not stayed under. I'm pretty sure I won't this time either.

While walking along that then fertile & now increasingly barren path I've been on, a familiar, yet toxic past has been slowly growing up around me. A useless clingy, poison ivy past of long ago;  Seven, Fourteen, Twenty One, or Twenty Eight years or more. I can take my pick. The growth from this current seven year stretch is now over and done, but in that remaining year or so, as I know the inevitable changes are heading down the pike, I had better get ready. A baby is born & I cannot NOT slip off that rock, even as I yell at the midwife, "I CANNOT DO THIS!" and she tells me calmly, like every other woman before me, "Sure you can honey."A divorce is finalized & although I would not go back, I think about looking him up again, just to be sure.

It is OVER my friend, but for some reason I start dragging my feet about 6 years down the road. I may put a toe over on to that slippery rock, but will see it's too wet and retreat. I will find ANYTHING to distract me from some useful preparation for the future, like taking better care of myself, or facing the reality that 'now' and 'back then' are no longer working, because they CAN'T. I turn on the TV, computer, sort beads, eat donuts, or anything else I can get my hands on, anyway.

I know this is not my correct, life giving path anymore. I won't get any further down this current one no matter how hard I try. The new, connecting path is over there, farther down, off the mossy rock, up the river; another bend over. Yes, I know. I know it, damn it.

Georgia OKeefe; Young Old Faraway

Hand Painted 3D Collage Assemblage With B & W Photos, Flower Die Cuts from Georgia Paintings & Shells on Contrasting Electric Blue, Black and White Shadow Box. Lovely. 9" x 11" x 1.5"

 Known as a loner, O'Keeffe explored the land she loved often in her Ford Model A, which she purchased and learned to drive in 1929. She often talked about her fondness for Ghost Ranch and Northern New Mexico, as in 1943, when she explained: "Such a beautiful, untouched lonely feeling place, such a fine part of what I call the 'Faraway'. It is a place I have painted before ... even now I must do it again."