she who spins

I’ve been here before.

I was pregnant and OD was shutting down for good.  I had held a diary since my freshman year of University (the early aughts) up until that point and decided that the end of OD was an opportunity to go and live my life instead of writing about it.  It seemed like a perfect end to a tumultuous, near decade-and-a-half life in survival mode.  A life that was moving from one thing to the next without processing the events, experiences, feelings prior; truly unreflected.

When I received the email that OD was relaunching, I didn’t feel immediate joy.  It made me cringe.  I know the person who sat behind that old diary and poured out every detail, every thought about life, unfiltered.  I know who she is, but I am not her.  And she would not know who I am now.  She was several layers of skin that have been shed.  She was a shell of a human; lost, confused, and brilliantly stubborn and ignorant.  The feelings that arise are shame and disappointment of who I used to be.  No, I don’t want to reclaim my diary; I want to reclaim nothing from that time of my life.  Now that I’ve finally reached a point of actual reflection, I am horrified by her; that shadow, who I deny I am, but know she will always exist because she has formed who I am.  I have to still learn to accept her as a part of me, the dark to my light; to release, to accept, to learn, to forgive, to love.

For a better part of a year, I’ve been anger mixed with depression. Denial was the past 15 years and beyond.  I am here now, but being aware of my shadow took an excruciatingly long time and at the same time, I feel incredibly grateful that I have even become aware at all, in this lifetime, at a young[-ish] age.  Most people don’t and continue the cycles/traditions created by their parents, and their parent’s parents, and their parent’s parent’s parents and so on, until they die.  And these cycles keep you in your box.  Keep you attached.  Keep you safe.  Keep you small.  Keep you separated from [your]self.  Keep you unaware.

Once you become aware, you have to learn to accept the parts of you that are no longer you.  But I have yet to find acceptance and have totally compartmentalized my life into two boxes: old and new.  Very creative, I know.

In the old is everyone from my formative years; my parents, my siblings, my high school and college best friend, and anyone who knew me as the old me; most everyone in my old career.  Someone they knew who was in the box right along with them.  I do not speak to these people, many of them for years, but the close ones for the past 6 months.  Mental anguish is a good way to describe this box.  I open this box every so often and just marinate in it.  It makes me irritable as fuck, and my anxiety out of control.  But it helps to process.  To allow yourself to process.  To willingly go in and feel ugly things, about yourself, and about people you once admired, respected, loved.  It doesn’t feel good to feel how disappointing some people are.  Doing this, every so often, provides the room needed to breathe.  Until you can’t anymore, so you allow yourself to go in.  I’ve always moved this slowly.

In the new is my husband, my daughter, and any ‘new’ friends I pick up along the way, which is rare.  As someone who is out of the box, I am acutely aware of how many people continue to stay in their boxes out of fear and cognitive dissonance; therefore, I know there aren’t very many people, like me, who share my worldview.  My husband’s family is not in either box.  I am free to be who I am in this box, but it is lonely.

Things can become brackish where the old has to come into the new, as I have compartmentalized and have yet to ‘divide and conquer’ with much of the old.  And in those moments when the two meet, I am not myself.  I can neither be who I used to be nor can I be who I am.  And I feel suffocated and small.

I’ve spun from my center for decades and I am finally getting back.  Slow drip.  But if you’re not saying it, you’re storing it and that shit has been getting heavy for too long.