WHO'S A BIG GIRL? THAT'S RIGHT. YOU'RE A BIG GIRL
Cindy Maddera
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It was a fuzzy dream. They aways are. I just know that Chris was there and we were supposed to be going to some festival parade thing, but I found myself in the upstairs bathroom of my childhood home surrounded by all the clutter of mom’s makeup collections. I had tried to tie-dye circles onto my romper but it didn’t turn out as I had hoped. I looked at Chris who had some expression on his face that I could only interpret as a look of disappointment. That’s normal. Chris is usually none too pleased with me in any of my dreams. I recognize that this is a manifestation of my own poor self esteem and that Chris was/is not actually disappointed in me. I looked at him this time and shook my head and said “I know. I’m sorry.”
Always apologizing.
The next morning, I found an email from Bluehost reminding me that hosting for my domain was set to renew in October. I still pay for hosting for Elephantsoap.com even though everything from the old space has been migrated over to Squarespace for years now. At first, I held onto that name because I thought that my blog would somehow blow up and turn to dust if I dumped it. I thought that search engines would be disrupted or that no one would know how to find me. I may have successfully migrated all of my old blog over to the new one, built the design of this current blog, yet I still feel like I have no idea what I am doing. It’s all a house of cards and it’s going to come crashing down any minute. I don’t know how this internet/webby thingy works. So I pay my hundred and something a year to Bluehost for peace of mind.
Michael has no idea I’ve been doing this. It is not on our budget spreadsheet and I charge it to one of my credit cards. I know…it’s kind of terrible. No…I feel really bad about it. When the email came up this time around, I asked the guys I work with for some advice. I brought up all of the above mentioned fears and they all told me that I do not need to hang onto that domain unless I just like the name and don’t want any one else to buy up elephantsoap.com. I thought about this and then I opened my mouth and started saying “I do have some emotional attachment…” Then my voice cracked with emotion and I had to walk away. I was completely caught off guard by the wave of tears that hit me. I hid in my favorite bathroom stall while I was taken over by wracking sobs, but I pulled myself together. Then I came back to my desk and cancelled the annual renewal for hosting on Elephantsoap.com. It doesn’t exist any more. I still own the domain name, but because of third party hosting mumbo jumbo this blog will no longer link to Elephantsoap.com. This only effects the links already posted on Facebook. Those links are now all broken.
And yeah, there’s a part of me that is really fucking sad about this.
Elephantsoap is Chris. His idea. His vision for me. It was more than him just handing me a blank empty sketch pad and saying “here ya go.” He built a space of code that translated into colorful borders and banners and said “write here.” It’s like he saw something in me that I still struggle to see in myself. I scoffed at it in the beginning. “What even is a blog? Why do I need one? I’m not a writer. I am not interesting.” But I started putting words in that space and pictures. Yeah, it was crap and drivel and navel gazing, but it was my crap. My drivel. My navel gazing. I’ve grown up though. The writing has changed; hopefully it’s better. The pictures I post have changed; hopefully they’re better. All of that started happening on the new space I made for myself. This, cindymaddera.squarespace.com, this is MY space. This is my vision. It’s where I don’t struggle to see the things that Chris saw in me all those years ago when he built Elephantsoap.
So, I’m going to take a moment to honor the gifts that Elephantsoap gave me and then I’m going to let it go.