Submitted by Lucy
My Story
Hello. My name is Lucy, and I want to start out being really truthful with you. I'm not Donna Reed or Betty Crocker. I don't want to write something that sounds like a sugary-sweet fairy tales. I want to be real, as close to my real life as I can make me.
I've always been a terrible housekeeper and not a very good cook. I've suffered from severe depression and have taken medication for years. I only have one eye. My other eye was removed in July 06, because of a rare form of freakish cancer. I'm a little bit weird; “eccentric,” you might say. Even the melanoma in my eye was unique.
But I've been married to the same man for almost 20 years. Incredibly, the man has survived bad food, shoddy housekeeping and wrinkled clothes (I gave up ironing years ago). He also survived a very angry ME.
It wasn't easy. I thought that it was everyone around me, especially my husband, who was to blame for my boring life. In the end, I had to rip out a lot of my fantasies to save the larger fabric that was my world.
I didn't notice that I no longer took care of myself because I was busy with our four boys. Our youngest had been born extremely premature, and his life was precarious. I was caught up in keeping him alive and doing all the other millions of things that women do. Oh heck, who am I kidding? I normally ignored the housework, or made the boys do it, so they would learn good values of hard work. That meant my house was pretty rank all the time. At our house, every single day, it felt like Feeding Time at the Gorilla Exhibit. They were either hitting each other on the head with blunt objects, or stuffing food in their mouths, swinging off the door jambs, leaping off the roof… completely cheerful about it all. And I adored them.
Well, those boys ate my bad (yet nutritious) food, and one by one, grew up and left home. As each one left, I felt a creepy tingling in my chest. As we got down to two boys in the home, that tingling became a roaring flame of rage, murder and blame. I realized that I had slowly slipped into invisibility, I had NO LIFE, and it was my husband's fault. I became something that I swore I would never be -- a boring lump with nothing to talk about except the kids. Since I still had three brain cells left, I used them to plan my divorce. THEN I would be happy.
But I was too lethargic to go through with it, so we stayed married, and slowly the light began to dawn: I had made myself boring and lonely and alone. It wasn't anyone's fault but my own, and it was MY responsibility to take my life back. Neither my husband nor my children wanted a martyr in their midst. And I wanted to have fun again too.
I started out slowly, trying easy things that I had liked in the PL (Pre-Lump) days. I started exercising, every day. I stayed in my living room and followed along on all the early morning workout shows. A friend had a funky extra bike, so we put a baby seat on the back, and baby and I started going out for bike rides.
I won't go into all the things that I began to do, but I needed them to have ME in them. Some activities were downright weird, but they were fun. I even tried my hand at making and selling plastic jewelry. (It's all good until the sun hits it, then all that soft plastic melts all over the wearer.)
Long story short, here's a small list of the things I've tried: creating a beadwork jewelry business, weightlifting, following a heavy metal band, being an assistant helper to the owner of a vintage clothing store, and, my favorite of all, bellydancing.
I never planned any of this. I don't have innate talent at many things. I'm not very brave, and certainly not glamorous. I'm just ME. But somehow, even if I've failed at something, I‘ve still succeeded, because it was FUN.
My hubby has been along for the ride, too. He won first place in traditional beadwork at the county fair (I was second), he lifts weights with me, he got to meet the heavy metal band, he's helped me to design and sew costumes, he is my go-to man at my shows, he was part of our musician ensemble when we had a troupe, and he's met artists, musicians, and other bellydancers from all over the world.
So, here I am today, starting over once again. I spent the past year recovering from the cancer and the loss of my eye, so now I am re-inventing myself. I still teach and perform bellydance (no, it's not just for thin young women), which blossomed into my sponsoring bellydancers and other musicians for cultural performances. I have traveled to Italy twice, and I'm a published writer for various magazines. I think I can safely say, I'm the only one-eyed bellydancer in the WORLD.
So, how does my story end? I promised you no fairy tale -- no birds singing, no happy, dancing elves, no magic potion, just...
I've been married to the same man for almost 20 years.
