Today I watched the movie "Wild" again for the second time. I saw it in a whole new light. And I don't know why I didn't register the themes of the movie the first time around, perhaps because it was too raw and close to home, but I certainly did this time, and I cried like a baby.
4 years ago my mother passed away, and although not unexpected given her ailing health, what was really unexpected was the overwhelming grief that has from then to now permeated and altered my world. She had been the centre of my world for so many years growing up, the barometer by which I measured my successes and failures, the one and only person whose love for me in my craziness was unconditional. And the loss of her and her love was a blow so unimaginable I was utterly unprepared for shock of the removal and the resulting fallout that has rocked my world.
I was always an individual, a stubborn and determined child who danced to the beat of her own drum. My mother who I fought with often as a teen and into my 20's because my wild nature and behaviour was incongruent to her Dutch Catholic sentimentality and teachings. She was worried by and for me, and constantly tried to set me on what she perceived was the "right" path as dictated by her faith. I of course was having none of it, finding my own truths, in blunders of unimaginable proportions. But then I married and had children, and strived to be the person she expected of me, good wife and mother, a socially proper and upright role of model citizenry..... and then the bitch had to die and fuck me right up.
So after her death, as I strived to come to terms with my new normal, I went a little crazy, off the rails in many respects. The year immediately after being one of immeasurable change in relationship, work, and home. But what was of immense significance was my need to act out and grasp the things to deal with the pain. And so began a dance of numbing myself with drugs and alcohol and copious quantities of sex. Sex of every imaginable kind.... with men, women, multiple men and women, transexuals, bdsm, selling sex, buying sex, performing sex. It felt so good to get lost in it, to be touched and to touch, to garner for even a moment a connection and intimacy so painfully missing.... searching in the orgasmic physical for any connection, desperate and needy from the void of her leaving. Misconstruing the physical momentary intimacy for the love that was lacking, using the numbing of alcohol and drugs to take away the feeling of wanting to die that I would sit and dwell in in moments of sobriety.
I was always a wild child, and dared much that has led me to many extremes, but I see now how all this is connected, and I am not ashamed for it. Rather, I feel I understand it better, and give myself permission to have made those choices for they were done in the aftermath of a deep and profound grief, one that is still 4 years later processing, and might even do so for life. And in it is the irony and cycle of life, for even as I grieve the loss of my mother and her love, so do I see in my daughter a mirror image in her desperate love and need for me as much as I had for my mother. For I am a mother now, the centre of her world, the barometer by which she measures her worth and merit, my unconditional love the support she craves and needs to boldly go forth in the world. I feel utterly unworthy of her, even as I understand how significant is my role and love in her life, just as was my own mother's to mine.
My mother always said I was a wild child, and I became wilder still after her passing as a means to punish her and myself in my grief. But things are swinging back around now, and the pain is less than it was, and the desperate sexuality segueing to a search for something more meaningful, just as I take on the reigns and mantle of the matriarch in the lives of my own kids. I will always be a wild child, for there is mystery in the magick of the untamed animal side of oneself, but she is more contained after her grief-ridden escape into the wilderness and back now ready to integrate into the whole woman once again. The grieving wild child is healing. I miss you Mama, I love you.
4 years ago my mother passed away, and although not unexpected given her ailing health, what was really unexpected was the overwhelming grief that has from then to now permeated and altered my world. She had been the centre of my world for so many years growing up, the barometer by which I measured my successes and failures, the one and only person whose love for me in my craziness was unconditional. And the loss of her and her love was a blow so unimaginable I was utterly unprepared for shock of the removal and the resulting fallout that has rocked my world.
I was always an individual, a stubborn and determined child who danced to the beat of her own drum. My mother who I fought with often as a teen and into my 20's because my wild nature and behaviour was incongruent to her Dutch Catholic sentimentality and teachings. She was worried by and for me, and constantly tried to set me on what she perceived was the "right" path as dictated by her faith. I of course was having none of it, finding my own truths, in blunders of unimaginable proportions. But then I married and had children, and strived to be the person she expected of me, good wife and mother, a socially proper and upright role of model citizenry..... and then the bitch had to die and fuck me right up.
So after her death, as I strived to come to terms with my new normal, I went a little crazy, off the rails in many respects. The year immediately after being one of immeasurable change in relationship, work, and home. But what was of immense significance was my need to act out and grasp the things to deal with the pain. And so began a dance of numbing myself with drugs and alcohol and copious quantities of sex. Sex of every imaginable kind.... with men, women, multiple men and women, transexuals, bdsm, selling sex, buying sex, performing sex. It felt so good to get lost in it, to be touched and to touch, to garner for even a moment a connection and intimacy so painfully missing.... searching in the orgasmic physical for any connection, desperate and needy from the void of her leaving. Misconstruing the physical momentary intimacy for the love that was lacking, using the numbing of alcohol and drugs to take away the feeling of wanting to die that I would sit and dwell in in moments of sobriety.
I was always a wild child, and dared much that has led me to many extremes, but I see now how all this is connected, and I am not ashamed for it. Rather, I feel I understand it better, and give myself permission to have made those choices for they were done in the aftermath of a deep and profound grief, one that is still 4 years later processing, and might even do so for life. And in it is the irony and cycle of life, for even as I grieve the loss of my mother and her love, so do I see in my daughter a mirror image in her desperate love and need for me as much as I had for my mother. For I am a mother now, the centre of her world, the barometer by which she measures her worth and merit, my unconditional love the support she craves and needs to boldly go forth in the world. I feel utterly unworthy of her, even as I understand how significant is my role and love in her life, just as was my own mother's to mine.
My mother always said I was a wild child, and I became wilder still after her passing as a means to punish her and myself in my grief. But things are swinging back around now, and the pain is less than it was, and the desperate sexuality segueing to a search for something more meaningful, just as I take on the reigns and mantle of the matriarch in the lives of my own kids. I will always be a wild child, for there is mystery in the magick of the untamed animal side of oneself, but she is more contained after her grief-ridden escape into the wilderness and back now ready to integrate into the whole woman once again. The grieving wild child is healing. I miss you Mama, I love you.
