This is true. I'm not the woman that my husband married 35 years ago.
I have been many women since then. I have been a kindergarten teacher who worked with crayons, songs and picture books. I have been a newlywed who took delight in a spice rack at her wedding shower. I have been a journalist, published author, blogger and ghost writer. On top of all of it. I have been the founder of a fertility non-profit, an activist, and a lawmaker -- I have been a professional agitator of change that has been honored, pandered to AND fired.
I have been sexually satisfied and terribly frustrated; a submissive, a dominatrix -- both master and slave. I have been the woman who has both loved and hated her body. I have believed in love and I have felt betrayed by love. I have been the gift embraced and cherished, and the gift left half opened and discarded. Yes, I have known what it is to be the object of desire, the seductress and siren --- and what it is to be dumped on my ass.
I am not the woman that my husband married. I was a virgin bride that turned into some kind of pleasure revolutionary. I have been "Straight" and "Something Else."
I am not the woman who believed in monogamy. I am not the woman who has felt betrayed by the promise of polyamory. I keep turning into a different woman with each day.
Vows and promises are never good forever. A life well lived is a life full of renegotiation. Go ahead. Think that you are different. It's adorable like kittens,hearts and flowers. I'm not jaded. I have just been around. In truth, that's why people lie and cheat. It's why people leave each other. We don't allow for evolution. We think we can box someone in and capture them in time -- forever. But you're never who you are tomorrow.
Not if you look closely. Not if you are willing to be honest.
I am not the woman that my husband married.
I am some kind of garden. I'm constantly replanting myself. I am not a building or a fixed object. There is no brick. I wake up each day and I don't know what I'm going to write, who I'm going to talk to and what direction my path will take me in. I am my own mystery.
Notice the pattern and the expectation in your own life. Are you planting a garden or building a skyscraper? Are you making vows with the expectation of Elmer's Glue or Cryo-Preservation?
Or is there a possibility of creating an evolutionary life?
I'm not the woman that my husband married. I'm not the woman that someone dated. Or that a lover left.
I am in the midst of constant reconstruction.
I recommend it.
Pamela Madsen runs retreats around the world to help women re-connect to their bodies and sensuous nature and is author of the book; "Shameless: How I Ditched The Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure and Somehow Got Home in Time to Cook Dinner" (Rodale 2011).
Earlier on Huff/Post50:
