awakening...

Reflecting on the events of the past weeks, I cannot help but suspect that something is up with the year 2007. Many unpleasant things have happened, not to me but to people I know and care about, and I can only wish the unfortunate string would be cut off this very instant and we can go about our business like we’ve always used to, minus the hard luck. As for my own life, it’s still the same…not so good and not so bad. I have a lot to be thankful for everyday, especially that the kids are growing up fine and healthy, but personally I have not found a good reason to really inhale and say “this is the life”. I am not complaining, but God knows I would be shamefully lying to myself if I said it is sweet and nice. There is the perennial pattern of being poor and sucking up to the system, and I mean all systems. In my mind I am a grand dame of some neverland, but in reality I am one of the nameless millions who carry on with their lives wishing for something better, and yet not getting as much as a notch higher, where comfort and quality of life are concerned. Is it because I am married into poor money, and that having children has been a poor choice as well? Oh god I wish not, because really I wouldn't trade any millions, if I had it, for the happiness I feel with my little children. But still, you wish for those millions, don’t you?….not for yourself, but for the children who right this very minute play in the yard, blissfully unaware of the worries and consternation you feel, while you look at them with sad eyes. I think that I have completely owned up to my responsibilities as a parent, and I can never be selfish enough to think of my needs, in deference to theirs, but it is the apparent truth that to fulfill whosever needs, we must provide….

On the other hand I recently finished this book, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. It is a story of a married woman , Edna Pontellier, whose life seems to be in a cage, but not in a bad confining way, as it seems on the surface she has everything: a wealthy life, a generous husband and two lovely boys. However, deep inside her she wanted to be free of society’s rules, to be unlike all other women who conform and do as they were expected. She was awakening to a new sphere where she comes to be her own woman and appreciates her physical and external powers, which were pregnant with sensuality and the passion she otherwise found lacking in her relationship with her husband. She took on a lover, believing that she could sacrifice the unnecessary things and reject society’s expectations, and find the self she thought she had lost in the roles she was condemned to.

However in the end, she had to make her own tale’s conclusion, as her discovery of maternal giving and loving had led her to understand that she could not go on with her unique and independent sense of self, by being what she wants, and having to be a mother to her children and a wife to her husband, all at once. As her lover rejects her, she walks into the water and swims away from the shore and from everything, thus the suicide. And, probably, the belated purpose to find herself again.

Once I put the book down, I thought…is this me? I don’t mean the lover or suicide, even if to be honest I had entertained the thought of the latter vaguely once or twice, but yeah what the heck, any form of dying is painful unless you’re born with case of catatonia. But seriously, is this how some mothers or married women must feel? Somehow? Is there a minutest moment in our lives where we feel that having married and raising kids have made us lose our sense of womanhood, of self, of personal growth? And if like Edna, we live in a society, that in spite of its modernity, has double standards, and still frown at women who indulge in their individuality a little too openly that it threatens to tear up their so-called moral fiber, well…are we to assume a mute compliance, and be the perfect mothers and wives, loyal only to our masters? Maybe I can, or will not.

I am afraid though, that when I feel I have too much to fight for my evolution as a woman, in the event that I have the full command of my freedom that I could finally grasp it on my fingers, I would be much too old and useless to enjoy, or even want it...