July 4, 2008

• Kween of the Queens challenge: Independence

  I haven’t made time for participatory blogrings lately, and have missed both Featured Grownups and Kween of the Queens topics for over a month, so I have been excited to see what KOTQ and FG would be asking us to do for July. I’m pretty sure I will participate in both topics  First of all, I am participating in the new Kween of the Queens Challenge: “How do you claim your independence? Write your own personal declaration of independence!  Fashion it after the original or create your own!” I don’t think I’ll begin with “When in the course of human events…” however.

  

  A long long time ago I made the journey down the seemingly endless birth canal inside my mother, looking out at the light as I passed through the womb. The stories my parents told of my birth were terrible and bloody, but thankfully I was too young to remember experiencing the pain of that birth, wherein my twin sister perished before she even traveled the full distance toward freedom.

  I made it, however. I didn’t come out “okay” but had some problems with a partially crushed skull. Thankfully newborn skulls are somewhat malleable, and the doctor was able to reconstruct me. I daresay that freedom from my birth probably counted as my first taste of independence. I don’t remember the fireworks, even as they went off in my head.

  Throughout our short lives here on Earth we have or will experience many forms of independence from earlier circumstances. There is first the independence of our birth, when we are released from total dependence on our mothers, to only a partial dependence. We go through several independence days when we are released from different schools. We are finally freed from our parental binds at some time, usually in our mid twenties. If we raise children ourselves, then there is the independence of their dependence when they leave the nest. We gain independence from our workaday jobs at the end of the week or at whichever times we are allowed days off, and we gain total independence from work at the time of our retirement. Eventually, we are free from all the restraints binding us to our planet, and we die. This is our final independence day regarding our present existence.

  Sometimes these freedoms are desired and embraced. Sometimes they come too soon for comfort and are feared and reviled. They always come sooner or later, and our existence should always act as a rehearsal for the many independence days which happen, heeded or not. Once in the world, I’m sure I, like most toddlers, marveled at the complexity and wonder of it all, and for years I was comfortable in my familial life, content to stay in that replacement womb my mother had prepared for me in the “real world”. As I grew, I got a taste of what freedom from my family might feel like, and I secretly ached for some release from familial restraints I perceived while growing up.

  Be careful of what you wish for. Sometimes actual freedom from a perceived restraint doesn’t stack up to the perception. While a teenager, that strange time in life when raging hormones free themselves from all logic, planting weird desires in the heads of everyone gaining puberty, I felt constricted and trapped. Unlike some teens, I worked alongside my parents to develop a young adulthood where I would live at home, instead of completely break away. I was given my own “apartment”, with bedroom, living room, and bathroom. This “apartment” was attached to the main house by a corridor with a locked door, so that I felt a degree of freedom from my parental existence whenever I closed and locked the door. Still, there were rules of the house, and sometimes I wanted to break those rules. The only way for true independence from any situation is a complete break. That break came sooner than later when my mother had a stroke and was hospitalized, followed soon after my father’s death from a massive heart attack.

  A few years after wishing for more independence I received it stronger and more quickly than I had initially desired. With parents dead, children are truly on their own. I learned responsibility pretty fast. Thankful that my parents had instilled a sense of responsibility in me from a young age, I was able to marshall that sense, along with my common sense, in order to make a place for myself in the world.

  I was never one to actively hope for an early release from my education. I always felt that my independence day from school would occur on the USC campus at my graduation. I didn’t even plan to leave upon graduation, because as an English major, my eventual goal was to teach, so I would stick around graduate school until I got an education degree as well. Because of my parents’ early demise, my freedom from school came quicker than I had wanted. I dropped out, never to return.

  Work in the retail industry proved a better life choice at the time than education anyway, from a monetary point of view. I was making more in retail management than my friends in education who were finding it more and more difficult to obtain teaching jobs. Independence from three different retail chains occured when I was either fired or the company for which I worked went out of business. Each time I was granted “independence” from another job situation, I had to begin again from the beginning. These independences were more despised than embraced.

  Since I’m childless, I’ve never experienced the independence of my children from their familial existence. I created my own living arrangements with friends and acquaintences throughout my life, and there have been times when I was freed from one roommate because they moved out, and I would have to find another. This situation is currently repeating itself, as my present roommate is suffering from the dismal effects of cancer raging throughout his body. Possibly sooner than later, he is going to find that he is gained independence from his life, and I will have been freed from yet another roommate. Such are the cycles of dependence and independence as the years pass.

  At this stage in my personal journey I am free of most all restraints. I have to work, and hope I don’t find independence from this situation any time soon, but with a rapidly deteriorating world economy, I’m not so sure that I can trust the stablitly of my employment. However, none of us should ever think that our lives are written in stone, and we are safe from all harm. Our independence from security can happen quite suddenly. I always prepare for the worst, so that when better times come I will always be delighted.

  I can’t plan for sudden instability or dire circumstance. I can attempt to plan around certain occurrences, but others can round the corner with complete surprise. So we simply can’t be ready for the searing blades of independence from circumstances we don’t wish to be extricated from if they happen. We have to roll with the punches, and accept our independence with wisdom and serenity. It doesn’t help us to commiserate over missed opportunity or lost bonds of friendship. 

  I never crafted my own declaration. I simply declare the truth as it crosses my doorstep. In short order, I might be free of another friendship, another home, and another way of living. But I’ll get through and I’ll go on, and I’ll try to find another situation from which, hopefully, the last independence, the freedom from life on this earth, at whatever time it occurs,  might find me comfortable, safe and fulfilled. 

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  BLOGGED.com. On June 17th, The Xanga Team blog wrote about participating in Blogged.com’s rating system for blog excellence. I don’t like “contests” and will never direct a reader of this blog to “vote for me”. However, it might be interesting to see how my readers “rate” my blog. So if you have time, GO HERE to see my own blog listing on Blogged.com. There is a link in the lower left hand corner allowing you to review and “rate” my blog on a scale of 1 to 10. It was “reviewed” at 7.0 by the editors of the site. You can also enter your own blog for review. Below I’ve embedded my 2007 MikeVideo “Star Spangled Dreams” (2min. 37 sec.)  Happy Independence Day! MFN/ppf

  Remember to turn off the “Jukebox this Week” music player to the left if you play the video!

  • 10:26 am
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