The One I Call Carolina

I have changed, so much. The things that use to matter so much before are trivial now. Love, work, fame, success, they are all just an image in the past. To be honest, I am no longer sure of what matters, it feels like the day to day has become the one permanent, constant thought. Those around me are transforming, having children, building a life. I have become a witness, I watch them grow and change, not eager to do so myself. I suppose I am somehow, the endless thinking, the quiet dreaming, it all adds up to something. I am a little more careless now, there is not one to satisfy just me. I embrace the madness and the reckless woman in me. The wine flows, so do the smokes. Lovers come and go, and that is just fine. A few understand me, but just briefly. Most leave, a few remain.Those see something in me I fail to see, and that is just fine. I listen to their praise with wide eyes, unsure of their honesty, but that has always been my greatest flaw, but that is just fine. I am alive. Isn't that the greatest accomplishment? Others find their pleasure in the achievement of goals, I will never achieve what I set out to do when I first started dreaming, but I am achieving something, and that something is what keeps me alive, what keeps me going.

Success has become an illusion, not something I crave anymore. There is no defining it, is it how much you make, or the status you achieve. Is it fulfilling the life mapped out for you by society, is it the number of degrees you have. Is it finding a partner and procreating, buying a house and a pet. I am not successful, I make less than most my friends do, it took me forever to finish my degrees, I am single and have no children, and at the age of 31 all I can account for is my writing, my friends, and my dresses. And somehow, I feel like the most successful person I know. I know the music I like, I read the books I want to, I have the friends that love me and a family that finds me amazing, I have enough money to live and do what I want, I can smoke and I can drink with no one telling me otherwise, I don't have to be a housewife or a mother, comes Friday night and I am whoever I want to be. I don't have to change who I am, be less crazy, less intellectual, less political, less me. And when I die, I would have lived. And yes, sometimes it feels like I was dealt a very difficult hand, but I believe I have played it well. Because that is life, knowing what you have and do the best you can with it. The best you want. And now I know what I want.

Finally, I have changed. The trivial is not the crucial. The crucial is the trivial. I live, and I am alive. The footprint I leave in this world is one of amazement. If I have a child that child will grow up to know life is to be lived, my child will unfold and change the world. That child may be my writing, that child may be a daughter or a son, that child may be my legacy. But until the day I leave this world I will live. I will live through the hurt, the depressions, the doubts. I will live through the music, the pleasure, the endlessness of a single night. Because the only thing I know, the one thing that will forever stand by my side is this demon and this angel. The one I call Carolina.