13 August 2009

COLLECTIVE SOUL AGAIN!!


I just found out last night that my favorite band of ALL TIME and of the WHOLE WIDE WORLD, Collective Soul, IS, indeed, coming back to Saskatoon in October to promote their new album, which has yet to be released later this month.

Once again, I'm delightfully blindsided to learn of their touring, and even more, their new album!! I just kind of thought with all of them at various stages of family-building and the independent direction they took with the band that they might slow down with the whole production and business of album-making and promotion. But they haven't! And so imagine my surprise to be sitting in the local sports bar with a friend, a gritty song catching my ear (much the same as Disturbed or Thrice would), only to look at the screen and see the title come up with Collective Soul's name on it!! I had never heard that tune before--and believe me, I KNOW CS when I hear it--and so was dutifully suprised/impressed to see their name attached to something that, as true to the form they have always had, caught my ear.

Twelve years. TWELVE YEARS!! of them making and continuing to put out music that just captures my life like a soundtrack. So exciting. And Kyle signed me up for the fan club so that I could get fan-club pre-sale tickets next week (yeah, yeah, I know, I wasn't a member already? It blows the mind, doesn't it?) This will coincide with our big wedding-do-over bash we're having in October, landing just after our big shindig. What a perfect mini-getaway!

09 August 2009

I would just like to go where people can't piss me off all the time. I wasn't built to settle here, or in a place like this; and it's not that I'm above settling down in any capacity, it's just that I cannot see myself growing up any more here. I feel like I've hit a brick wall, blatantly avoiding common friends, unwilling to "up-cheer" those needing to be impressed, and overall-ly withdrawing from the things and the situations I knew before. It sounds a bit like depression. That's because it is.

What do I have to be depressed about? Is this some premature mid-life crisis? I have no assignment to identity through my age--as in, I really don't care about that (although the age thing does play a part when thinking about what I am doing at 30 years of age.) However, the whole entire scope of what Kyle and I have learned coming here, suffering trauma at the yearling stages of our family, and consequently been fire-tested and bronzed with the whole gambit and gamut of running our lives as we have, is far from lost on us.

I have to wonder if it's just now, yet again, as "just now" learning has ALWAYS been with me, learning who I am. Finding myself. Learning what I want. Or... is this just typical no matter what you've been through? See, I find myself wondering if all this was just delayed progress--these times that come and launch me into the next stage of growth with the horrifying change on the horizon--that would have come earlier, say when I had been 20 and in college, without worry or say, 24 and focused on my career and/or getting married. Basically, the time period most people have to learn these things before launching into a family or career, instead of doing everything ass-backwards or, as Ozzy would say "going forward in reverse." ("It's just a sign of the times.")

What makes me so, so, so angry about this all, too, is that I suffered a lot at the hands my own fate chosen by my own decisions and it was even put to my face in much the same way by a friend, who made me feel like I was some princess chalking up all her life lessons to "happenstance." But even with the truth to be found in her words and the hard-hitting realization that a LOT of where I'm at has to do with my decisions, most, if not all, the decisions that I made were out of dire need, repressed anguish, desperation or simply trying to remain aloof to guilt. From early on, I acted tough but needed escape routes. It's not that I really chose this path for myself as in wanting what unfolded the way it has, to exist in this way, with deliberate decisions based on hard, cold consequences (do or die, mild or wild.) It's that, other than choosing to be a mom (and even then, it was about dealing with consequence than it was premeditated choice,) it was the path of least resistance. It's excruciatingly maddening to realize this at this stage in the game, but regardless of how I just chose to 'go along with it' or take the path of least resistance (thereby indicating the decision in and of itself), I had never taken responsibility for the control and the direction of my life, as per it fitting with Kyle's, nor had I owned up to accepting the consequences, good or bad.

So. Here we are, after all this... stuff. The "autopilot crux", the "marriage crux", the brick walls, the intense ups and the down lows, at another brick wall; but now? Now we are ready and somewhat prepared to take on the responsibility of our happiness, the current issue being location, but we have two daughters rooted in the community to tow with us whose safety and security we must consider. Whether we decide to stay or to move.

And so, I'm left to wonder what is best versus what is wanted and wondering if those two will ever intersect each other or destroy the other irreparably. Do we move closer to my mom, in a place where Kyle can grow professionally, and I can access the multitude of possibilities while giving the girls a new experience that they would never get here and eventually be grateful for? Or do we stay here to keep their worlds secure, forsaking our own contentment, living in the bland continuity of day-to-day small town business, suffering all the big fish that throw their unethical weight around so that we can be reduced to a prematurely stagnant family? Doesn't the way we stand out when we are around the girls' cousins say much about what's going on in our dynamic? If not to them, surely to me. And if we secure their minds by staying here, how much are we helping them if we are not truly content? There is no real sense of child-to-parent reliance then, no sense of being able to come to us, no sense of having to rely on us as parents to develop trust and dependence. If we are happy in the sense of real happiness (and not so much as in personal gratification), then can't that make us better providers? Would we not be able to help them through the adjustment of moving? The pains of the school yard? The trials of life? The weight of their world would shift in their eyes, then, causing them to be stronger, the pain yielding growth with an emphasis on the parental role they have not seen on us. How can we help them or love them or expect them to be strong if we are not strong? Pillars of tough love?

It's all coming 'round...