Dropping the bucket down in to the well and seeing what comes up, as I do most days, a bit of this, some of that, maybe the odd scrap of inspiration, quite a lot of repetition. My online avatar, theoretically accessible to thousands, in practice viewed by very few – is it, as online personas supposedly are, pure fabrication, or is it truer to who I am than the perceptions of those who think they know me in Real Life? I show and tell so much on here that I would struggle to explain face to face, but realised many years ago that this is a safe space where few venture to look.
In trying to look at myself and my life with attention but without judgement, in trying to discover and welcome my Wild Thing, I look back over all the times I have run away, and the people, situations and commitments I have run away from. According to Clarissa Pinkola Estés, there is not one single descent into the underworld, the wild forests of the psyche, one lesson to be uncovered, learnt and brought to light, but layers beneath layers.
From all my runnings away, I have never returned voluntarily. Although once or twice it might seem that I chose to turn back (thinking specifically of returning from the USA to the house my husband and I had left four years earlier), the situation I returned to was always different from the one I left (or at least, I was different – in that case, I was now a mother with two small children, and no longer a professional career woman) and in each case it was only a matter of time before I ran away again (except arguably the most recent, but of course it could still happen – only time will tell).
What am I trying to say? That reading Pinkola Estés’ book is leading me to reflect on all those times I have leapt into the unknown, the choices I made (which were largely my own, though some also involved my husband), and see them as… well, maybe answering the call of the Wild Woman?
Last week, I read a piece where she suggested drawing up a time-line of life-events and at the time I dismissed the idea, but then I wrote about my first running-away – in fact the first two – going away to university and then accepting the first (actually, the only) man who asked me to marry him.
I have a tendency to look back on my life as a string of failures: failed marriages, failed (or abandoned) careers, dreams that were fulfilled but then turned to dust and ashes. But perhaps there were lessons learnt, things gained which weren’t recognised because they weren’t what I thought I was looking for? Most of those runnings-away were thrilling, at least in the early days, even though I eventually came to the conclusion that wherever I went, I could never ‘run away from myself’.
Fail again. Fail better.