As A Wife

This is an exploration of myself and my place in life—not specifically as a “wife” only (and all that that might entail), but as someone who has reached that milestone—what those milestones are beginning to mean; who I am seeing myself becoming as those markers of adulthood and outward self begin to come and go, from finishing college, enduring family deaths, admitting to needing glasses when I read too long—tiny, perhaps meaningless things, but adding up, I could not fathom the person I’d become if you’d asked me ten years ago. I tend my garden, I wear boots; I wear brooches, I go by Elizabeth rather than Liz, I live through and suffocate with PTSD and with the equally exciting (but more pleasantly so) art that I make, and the deepest, pinkest, whitest scars in my skin have faded (for the most part). Perhaps I’m who I would have wanted, could I have imagined it.

But as far as titles for who this is, “Wife” is an easy one. An offhanded comment from a dear friend of mine years ag: as we were speaking of a shared mentor, a poet that we both learned much from and still hold in the highest regard, he passingly said, “I had never imagined she could be something as mundane as a ‘wife.’” It took a long time for those words to truly settle within me, and now they won’t let go. As I attempt to understand my relationship with not only that but my own body, going through both natural changes and continual illness, I am using that word as a grounding point for this work.

This page is the hub for each check-in for the project, as time passes, and as I myself change within it.