Tessie D

I picked up “Women Who Run With the Wolves” at the library last week. The librarian, Sharon, recommended it to me when she saw me come in. She said it was probably something that I’d like, considering what I’d been checking out lately.

I’d never heard of it before, but I try to read whatever someone recommends.

It’s about the myths and stories that have been told about “wild women” who exist before — beyond? — society and culture tell them who they are and who they should be.

“Feeling extraordinarily dry, fatigued, frail, depressed, confused, gagged, muzzled, unaroused. Feeling frightened, halt or weak, without inspiration, without animation, without soulfulness, without meaning, shame-bearing, chronically fuming, volatile, stuck, uncreative, compressed, crazed.”

Why does this feel so much like me? So much like the past two years?

“To fear to venture by oneself or to reveal oneself, fear to seek mentor, mother, father, fear to set out one’s imperfect work before it is an opus, fear to set out on a journey, fear of caring for another or others, fear one will run on, run out, run down, cringing before authority, loss of energy before creative projects, wincing, humiliation, angst, numbness, anxiety.”

“Afraid to bite back when there is nothing else left to do, afraid to try the new, fear to stand up to, afraid to speak up, speak against, sick stomach, butterflies, sour stomach, cut in the middle, strangled, becoming conciliatory or nice too easily, revenge.”

“Afraid to stop, afraid to act, repeatedly counting to three and not beginning, superiority complex, ambivalence, and yet otherwise fully capable, fully functioning. These severances are a disease of not an era or a century, but become an epidemic anywhere and anytime women are captured, anytime the wildish nature has become entrapped.”

The feeling of being trapped in my own life… by Momma and Daddy’s choices, by Alex, by God.

I’ve been so afraid for so long, feeling like I was drowning, trapped just below the water’s edge. The air so close that I could see the surface just a few inches from me but still out of reach.