DNA Diaries

Halloween approaches and it is my favorite time of year. The leaves are incredible here in Michigan and they simply take your breath away. That and the bitter cold that sets in, but hey, everyplace has it's pitfalls.
At this time of year I am always busy constructing costumes for my kids. This year I am facing twin ice cream cones and R2D2. The older ones will dress, but only to be cool....cause begging for candy isn't cool enough for them any more.

Windows are covered in Frankenstein, Dracula and mummies. Yards are strewn with mock tombstones, witches and black cats with arched backs. Bats and creepy crawlies hang from branches and a feeling of mystic static fills the air. We can be what we can't normally be in our daily lives. Princesses, super heros, silly things and scary things. We have that one day to shed any social stigmas and let loose. And who doesn't love that?
This year has a different feel to it than it normally does for me. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I passed it off as my kids getting older and not having that accustomed wide eyed knaviety as in years past. I pretended the past few years had worn on my own inner child and I was just feeling more adult than I had before. I had a ton of excuses for it, a list as long as my hubby's arm. (and boy does he have long arms.) But I wasn't being honest with myself. It was easier to pretend, like I had for my whole life. But I can't pretend any more. I've lost that ability.

I'm not growing older and losing my stary eyed Halloween spirit. I'm growing into what I have always been but didn't want to admit. I am the skeleton in the closet. Me. With no costume. Just me being me.
Now this is quite a time in life to realize you are a big fat secret, one to be buried forever and forgotten. Or at the very least barely thought of. I'm getting close to 40, you would think this revelation would have happened years ago. I think part of it did, but I wouldn't allow myself to wrap my brain around it enough to give it a title or a place in my life. But as I age, I find it harder and harder to keep up false personas. I don't have the time or energy to devote to it and quite frankly, I don't care to. It is what it is. I am what I am.

I am the skeleton. That lurking looming presence that stikes fear into the heart of my father. The thing that he has worked so hard to lock away behind that closet door and leave forever. He tried to throw away the key, but I just kicked in the door. Who needs a damn key?

It was all fun when I thought I was donning a costume to be something else. Taking on the form of something I wasn't. It was exciting and freeing. But once you come face to face with the fact that you are and always have been nothing but that freakishly dark secret in someones emotional closet-it kind of loses the magic of dressing the part.

Maybe this year I'll be more honest with my costume. I'm thinking a plastic knife protruding out of my back and through my heart might be more appropriate and much easier to pull off this year.

Happy hauntings everyone. BOO!!! yeah....whatever....