pillar of bugs

Back when I was 15 and trying hard to be a fundamental Christian someone gave me a book about caterpillars turning into butterflies (feel free to hum any Joni Erickson song now) and there was one page where all the bugs had made a pillar and were trying to get to this one place. No one knew where the one place led to but everyone knew it was important to get to, some would fall to their deaths, others were trampled while a few made it to the top and found it led no where.
Twenty two years later and I still feel like a fricken caterpillar. Sometimes in writing it feels like everyone is trying to get somewhere, some people support you while others tear you down and others look to your for direction to figure out where to go. And we are all headed up that big pillar.
But I suppose it doesn’t have to be that way. When I talked to Ilya about his book, which was brilliant. He said, “Teresa, writing is such a private thing. There is no way to do it; each of us does it differently.” Like a dance almost, each of us finding our own tune, direction.
Still I feel like a bug today in my life. My role as a mother, teacher, writer, in everything I feel like I am crawling over and over the same bodies trying to get to some certain place. I just don’t know where.