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Articles
My Friend
by Nancy Nylen
My Friend
I couldn't wait for my friend to leave. She had been with me so many years, tagging along on vacations, showing up in my life at inopportune moments and generally making her presence felt in my life whenever she had cause to arrive. And now that she's gone, I wonder, is this for good? I kinda miss her. She made me feel like a woman, a producer, a female force of nature.
We used to refer to her as "the Curse" . . . back in the day when these things were whispered, quiet acknowledgments of womanhood. We didn't celebrate her appearance in our lives, we suffered, we had our days when we were easily dismissed from life's required performances, due to "female problems". It was the easy out to escape the demands of jobs, of men, of gym class, of anything we didn't want to engage in, due to the excessive demands of our bodies.
That's not to say that cramps, migraines and general bitchiness are made-up symptoms, it's just that we create, exaggerate, and generally take advantage of our discomfort to increase the personal space around ourselves that we undoubtedly need for several days to separate from the demands of our normal regimen. The red tent.
These past few years have been filled with a different sort of regimen . . . forgetfulness, moodiness, weepiness, itchiness, sleeplessness, spaciness, detachment, you-name-itness: all viable elements to the coming cessation of female powers of reproduction. I kept thinking, when will it end, and now, the first month missed, I wonder, is this it? The end??
Have I finally entered the stage of "the Crone": a shriveled, wise, old woman cackling heartily at the lustful stages of the maidens and mothers on the trek behind me? It's a little disconcerting. I don't feel old, nor wizened, any more than I did several years ago.
But the desires have definitely cooled, the wanting to be wanted, not so desirous. I love the time alone I have, grateful no man demands my time, nor attention, nor servicing.
If that sounds cold and detached, I am sorry. I do not feel unaffected by my fellow men around me, I still think that the intimacy found in a one on one relationship is the best possible place, just not without it's required workload to maintain . . . and probably not in the primary position of people, places and things I cannot live without.
I can and do live without, and I can afford the luxuries of dinners when I please, eating nothing, or cheese and crackers. I can weep at sappy emotional moments in life without explanation. I can sleep without a partner's snoring, and wake to read at 3 in the morning. I can kick the dog out, or sleep with her curled at the end of the bed.
I can do all sorts of things that I didn't know I could . . . and being a crone is another. Yes, I miss the young woman full of pregnant expectancy in creating love and another human being. But now, I can mother all, or rebuke them, as my own energies allow.
It is far easier to put energies into a specific cause of your choosing, when the pulls of children and jobs and men don't extract a daily toll.
Yes, Valentine's Day this year, my final arrival of my dear old friend, was a last love letter to my femaleness. I didn't know I should be saying goodbye, old friend, but then, I have always hated good byes.
I will think of you fondly, my moon child self, she who brought my two beautiful children into my life, she who declared me woman in spite of the rebellious tom-boy girl, she who must be bowed to in moments of crippling infirmity and respected in her glorious womanly self! Can it be that we are parted ways forever?
I will miss your monthly influence, when I checked upon the moon hanging in the sky, and wondered if I were due for a visit soon. You are my woman's soul, my past, my mother, my self.
I will miss you, my dear friend.
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Contact the author, Nancy Nylen
, at nancy@causeoflife.com
.