Metamorphosis: Not Just for Butterflies Anymore

It's Saturday at Noon. I have 1000 law school related papers and books spread out around me, a load of laundry in the washer and one in the dryer, a stack of clothes to iron, dishes that need to be unloaded from the dishwasher, a 3-year-old laid out on the sofa, and the Auburn/Arkansas game on the television. I just checked textsfromlastnight.com and fmylife.com and I can't help but think about how my life has changed so dramatically in the last 5 years.

DISCLAIMER: This blog may not be that funny. If you don't care to hear about my life, then I suggest you stop reading. I apologize. Give Beckett about 20 minutes. He'll do something funny. I will relay it here.

I don't know where I was on October 10, 2004, but if I had to guess, I was working the lunch shift at Brick Oven Pizza Co. I was probably hungover and swapping "guess what I did last night" stories with the rest of the staff. I wasn't in school at the time (I had decided to take a year off) and so my only responsibility was to show up to work on time and try to get through my shift without screwing too much up. Simple.

Four years later, I am Beckett's mother and a law student. I am simultaneously the same as I was then and yet so very different. When I think that it's simply the circumstances that have changed, I find myself reminded this is not the case. This, of course, was no overnight process, and yet the realization of the fact happened in a split second. Funny how you don't see the big picture when you're in the thick of the transformation. No, you come out on the other side, bruised, bent, perhaps even broken in some places. And only then can you see what has happened in the last day, 6 weeks, 9 months, or 5 years.

This is what being in the world means, at times we suffer. - Don DeLillo, Love--Lies--Bleeding

I can no longer decide I need a drink and walk from one room directly to the other, grab said drink, and go about my business. I will straighten toys, fold clothes, and pick up crumbs en route to the kitchen. When did this happen?

This weekend has been an exercise in frustration. There is not an aspect of my life that has not been mulled over in my brain half a million times. I have broken down in tears no less than 10 times in the last day and a half. But this is a good thing. The questioning, the anger, the sadness only help me to know that, no, things might not have gone the way I had wanted, but they are going. And that is the important part. Five years ago, if something didn't go my way, I would spend days being depressed. Today, I know that, one day, the ends will justify the means. One day in the future, I will have another day like today, when I realize that the bumps and the hiccups and the major roadblocks were all worth it. And simply knowing that helps me to navigate them. It's not flawless and it's certainly painful at times, but it's also quite beautiful.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. - Nelson Mandela, "A Long Walk to Freedom"