Once upon a time there was a little girl who wanted to be a witch. She stole herbs and spices from her mother's cupboard and her father's hidden book on witchcraft. He'd hidden it in their closet, along with all his Playboys and Swedish Erotica. Shocked but intrigued, she snagged a Playboy and took it to school to show her best friend. They looked at it in the bathroom, passing it beneath the stall doors. Imagine the trouble she would have been in? Only in 2nd grade... they still believed in corporal punishment in her small Virginia town back then. She was never caught, thank the goddess, though she probably started her friend on a life of sin and debauchery... or perhaps not.
And what became of the little witch? Her use of herbs and homeopathy must stem from that want of power... the fledgling desire to see beyond the closed Baptist minds surrounding... endless desire to be who she is and not who they expect... is that the point? What is real and just a pose to keep the moralists annoyed? No, it's real. She was born different... past and future compounded. Lost arts, religions, passions merge with high tech, plugged in, web connected. Connections seem more real online... because like connects like more easily there? Age seems unimportant in distant lands... not so much here and now. Surrounding small minds can kill creative spirits daily.
She became I and I am still becoming.
I search inside for my once plentiful, now buried, strength.
Hidden like a timid little creature... blocking the course where my creativity flows forth, the spring of my experience and desire. What to tempt it with? Thinking how to coax it back into the light, I wonder... what if it's too late? It doesn't feel hopeless... better late than never? Never late but better? Yes.
Time to begin to begin, again. To reinvent or let the truth of me and my spirit burst free from the bindings like a prisoner bound and chained for so long... by my self, by my mother, by every little word that ever told me I was wrong. Whispered I wasn't good enough. Shouted that I needed to forget all that and do something normal.
Normal. What a horrible word "normal" can be. Something to strive to become or something to run from. Something to make you "part" of something. We are all part of something and separate, n'est-ce pas? Why does it have to fit into conveniently spaced little compartments? Life is messy and we should revel in it. The flaws make it real. They accent the beauty more completely than perfection ever could.
If at first you don't succeed, next time you might... or the next. Rinse, lather, repeat. Never surrender your dreams. Never. Remember that the trying is the fun part, making it is the sweet part... continuing after you make it may be the hardest part of all. I want to find out if it is.