In the dark night of my habits, when sleep avoids me like a troublesome child, I find my life has become a series of other people’s requests, demands, interests and needs.  Surely, it’s my fault, all mine, to have put myself on the lowest shelf, deep behind the empty glass jars and plastic storage boxes of those I love.

In myself I recognize the child of dysfunction and her need to solve problems before they become tornadoes, to placate and indulge, to clean up after and “fix.” It has, in many ways, become a life style for me:  finding socks and making pancakes, washing clothes and chairing a PTA event, among other things.

For many years I remained blissfully unaware of this as my primary operating system.  But recently, as the realities of middle age encroach upon my day-to-day life, I ‘m feeling stifled by the needy expectations I have created in those around me.  Trampled, buried under the rushing feet of other people on their way to true life while I lie like a doormat cushioning their paths, my “Johnny-on-the spot” tendencies suffocating the very life out of me.

And so like a cranky teen, I snap and bark, hide myself away.  “Leave me alone,” I’ve sometimes yelled.  Sad but pathetically true, I raise my voice when calmer heads ought to prevail, when I should be able to only just say, “I’m working.”  I’m late in my life to develop a healthy respect for my own needs, like many women, I suppose. So I fight, I scream, seeking my breath, my voice, my me, to live fully and completely in a life that’s mine, not an adjunct, not an also-ran but a life created by, defined by and directed by me.

Then, when the outburst has achieved its end and I have, however haphazardly, claimed a space for myself, contentment descends.  I attach myself blissfully to pen and paper and let my life flow.  Then, I’m sorry for my explosion, but not a bit sorry for the space.

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Jessica Ciosek’s work appears in the “Mothers” issue of Minerva Rising.