What I Want

Today I was given a glimpse of what I want in my life.  I feel like I've finally found a place I might start to feel like I fit in.  My family and I were at the homeschool co-op today, and I finally felt like I was surrounded with my kind of people.  One of them even wants dreads (which reminds me, I'm way behind on keeping everyone updated on how those are going...)!  It was good to feel like I was in a place where I didn't feel like a freak.  For once I felt like I belonged.  I didn't even realize that was so much what I wanted until I was surrounded by it.  I guess this is what I get for not spending any time with my good friend, Krystal.  I miss her, but she's always so busy.  She goes through phases like that.  I guess I do too.

For the longest time I thought what I wanted to be was a dancer.  It was a dream my mother told me was impossible.  I was too old for ballet by the time I was getting into dance, so I'd pretty much given up on all dance.  Dance wasn't an option for me.  It could never be a career.  That door was closed.  When I found out belly dance was still an option, I threw myself into it.  I should have been honest with myself.  I would have loved it as a hobby, but as a professional?  That's just not where I'm at.  I love to dance, but I think the dream of being a dancer is something I should have let die a long time ago.  Perhaps knowing I could never do it made me fight that much harder for it when I found a way.  Yes, I'll always love dance, but the truth is I'm just tired of it.  It's been wearing me down slowly for years, but I don't think it's what I want anymore.  I've got other goals in mind.  I think doing it as a hobby, or maybe taking a certification course to teach prenatal dance would be something that suits me, but I'm definitely not the kind of person to be a professional dancer.  It's just not who I am anymore.

Instead I'm finding I'm really happy with being a mother.  It's not what I imagined I'd be.  It wasn't until not long before I was pregnant with my oldest that I even decided I might want kids some day, and at that point it was only one.  A little over nine years later and I'm hitting the sadness of all my friends having babies and I want another one.  I've already got three and people keep cursing me with four already (they keep telling me I've already got four!) so I guess it's fitting.  Even so, I never thought I'd be here.  I thought I'd long ago been done with having children, yet I still want more.  Sometimes I think I must be crazy.

It's not just having babies to have babies.  I want to see the wonderful people they grow up to be.  It's more than the first steps and the first words, I want the experience of the first time they read, the first time they discover something they really love, the moment they see what they want to do in life.  I want the experience of turning a helpless little infant into whatever they want to become some day, once they figure it out for themselves, of course.

Then there's everything else I envision.  I see moms wearing their babies.  I see breastfeeding at the co-op.  I see women who are cloth diapering or using elimination communication.  The kids are learning about all sorts of things.  They're developing new interests.  It's an amazing thing.  I'm seeing moms who are gluten-free and they're using holistic remedies.  It's everything I hoped I'd some day be doing.  I feel like I've found a home with these other women.  It feels like the right place to be.  This is where I want to raise my kids, not just for them, but because I feel fulfilled by it too.  I feel like they've welcomed me into the fold, in a way, like I've found a place that I finally feel satisfied by.

Add this to everything else I want in life, to be sustainable and all of that, and I think that's the direction I should be looking.  I really love dance, but dance doesn't give me the feeling of making an impact on the world.  Dance is a beautiful art and it makes people feel or think, but it's not at all like changing the world by teaching the next generation another way.  I think this is it.  I've finally found what I need to be doing with my life.  I've finally found where I belong.