Uncoordinated

When I was a young girl, I went through periods of life when I was awkward and gangly. As the years passed, I grew more coordinated and became somewhat graceful as I began to master the movements of my limbs and the thoughts of my mind. But now, I feel awkward and gangly like a child; as though I'm going through some odd adult growth spurt. I haven't yet learned to adjust to my new proportions.

As a young adult, I felt I had come into my own. I felt confident in my skills and abilities. My years of training had come together to prepare me for a future that I watched being realized. Of course, I had not foreseen the particulars of my future. But though certain details morphed and changed, the direction I was headed in fit well with my idea of who I was.

But, in time, something changed. This change led to a chain reaction: a chain reaction of change. I had not imagined what would happen when I became a mother. How could I have known that I would find myself unacceptable and incompetent? How could I have guessed that I would want to change so much about myself?

On the day that I first realized I could not remain the person I had become, I began a journey into a future that I had never imagined for myself. And so, my graceful limbs began to stretch in a new direction. My thoughts and the way I reasoned grew into something I had never known. I became someone new, someone I had never met, and someone I had never even imagined.

Here I stand today in a new life facing an unfamiliar future. I am gawky in this life like a teenager, fumbling between a confusing child-likeness and an emerging maturity. I bounce between both, not really completely either. And I long for the grace I once had, if not the life. I yearn to be comfortable in my own skin and confident of my future.

And yet, in a way, I am more comfortable than at any other time in my life. I have traded bad for good, complacency for activity, common use for special use. I have traded an old life in on a new.

But this was not a future I had envisioned. I don't really know how I fit in this future or where it leads me. I never anticipated this use for my talents and training; they have not prepared me for this. And so I wait, not altogether patiently, for the day I regain my coordination.