Another Post, Another Layer

I had ten days off at the end of 2010. Ten days in which I intended to get out all the vestigial effluvia of the year. Ten days to write and read and create and dream of 2011. Ten days to have the conversations I've been avoiding, to lament the losses and celebrate the wins and to blog about it all. 

I didn't really do that. I didn't read a lot. And I wrote even less. I thought a lot. And had one or two (mostly incomplete, mostly text) beginnings of conversations. 

And since then. Since 'the big beginning' of 2011, I've been even quieter. Partly it's because I stirred up some stuff that I wanted to sit with. And partly it's because I'm still sorting through what I want 2011 - and this blog - to be. But it really has occurred to me like I haven't quite got my head in the game and I'm not sure why. 

I think my hero blogess at Redhead Writing may have nailed at least a part of the puzzle today though when she wrote: 

We’re richer and more complex than our protective outer layer, the one we let people see each and every day.

I often feel like I pour my guts out in this venue in the hopes that someone out there will read and see and that maybe I'll touch something in them and they'll similarly want to reach out and touch something in me. But, honestly, it's not really exposing all that much of a soft underbelly for me to admit that as a 42 year old woman living alone I'm lonely. I think you probably know that without my writing about it over and over and over again. 

Which is why Erika's statement resonated for me. What I've been letting people see - not just on my blog but across the broad spectrum of my life - is just the outer protective layer. I remove a mask, become familiar with what's underneath, and find eventually that it too is a mask - perhaps more refined, or thinner, but still a mask. They are like the 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, and no matter how angry the king gets, I can't seem to get to the end of them. 

I'm richer and more complex than the SCWInk you see here. More capable. More satisfied. And more fulfilled. Somewhere along the way, just as Bartholomew's final hat is one of surpassing beauty, I hope to find the prize. And, in the meantime, here goes another mask. Thanks, Erika, for the reminder.