gearing up for needed change

with christmas behind now, my mind is busy with figuring out to go forward; how to live differently than i’ve lived this last year (and the difficult ones before it too).  my new books come on thursday, so i’m hoping to get some reading in before the new year approaches, so that i feel like i have a starting place…something to work on.  i just don’t want to wake up and be doing things the same way, even if i have to do the same things…does that make sense?  i need that sense of renewal and focus on the present.

i went to my work christmas party and i realized something sort of big.  i don’t care to be out in party-type atmospheres anymore.  the last years of my marriage my ex and i went out often, but it was to mostly escape being alone with each other.  we had a comfort place, where we knew everyone and when we were there, we socialized with others, taking the uncomfortable feelings between us away for a little while.  it was always too much alcohol.  another escape.  i still love a glass of wine or two on fridays after work, but in those days, i drank to not think.  it wasn’t good.  i wasn’t miserable at the christmas party, but it was easy to leave and i know that i could have done without going.

i notice as i’ve begun pondering this self journey, that i’m discovering more things that i “don’t” want to do or “be”, more than i’m learning what i “want” to do or “be”.  i hope that’s half the climb…eliminating things that were normal and no longer feel fitting to me.  will that get me down to the bare essentials of “me”?  or will i end up more of a hermit than i’ve already become?  i really do crave some sort of social life, but without friends, it’s a hard thing to find, and i don’t want to find it in party atmoshperes with drinking.  i no longer feel the need to escape all the unhappiness i was in during my marriage, and so those escapes just no longer fit.

i just wish i knew what i DO want, lol.  i have such a strong desire to walk forward in life, but have no clue what to walk towards, so it doesn’t make any sense to me yet.  i feel like i have so much to figure out and the only way i’m going to be able to do it, is to open myself up.  i’ve been so closed…so tight…so self protected for so long, that now i understand that i’m keeping myself from things that “mite” just resonate for me somehow.  part of me thinks that if all i do for the rest of my life is be a part of raising theia…it’s a commendable thing.   and it is/would be.  and i don’t want to carry that role.  but still…like always in my life…i just feel like there is something more.  not “instead of”….but more.  for myself.  i just truly don’t understand why that should be as hard as it is to figure out.

i used to write.  in fact, i have two books in mid-write.  both i once had hopes of publishing.  i have a very large collection of poetry i’ve written over the years, that i also wanted to publish.  and i used to be very much into photography.  at one point, i wanted to start my own business…creating cards with my photos and selling them.  but when i got sick with Covid three and half years ago, for some reason, as i healed…those desires never came back.  unfinished business, it feels like.  but i honestly can’t get back into the mode i should “want” to be in, in order to make either thing happen.  i thought about starting a new book entirely.  a new year, a new me, a new start, a new book, right?  but i seem to be in the same years long state of writers block.  i “want” to do it, and nothing comes to me.

it has occurred to me over and over, that something just needs to light some kind of fire under my a**.  what does it take to feel “alive”?

the pages of this journal seem to be filled with the same pains and confusions thus far.  but…it’s what the journal is for.  a place to unwind my mind, get my thoughts out, mull them over.  a place to spill my words and thoughts and not be judged.  a place to be “real”, even if it isn’t pretty.  and it’s not right now.  i get that.  but i still need to be “real” somewhere in my life, and this is it.  so i’m hoping that eventually these pages will turn into the journey that my heart so badly wants to take to a place that i can’t even define.  i just need to travel within myself…i need to move things around inside me, pack some things up and put them away, discard others.  clean myself out, and then accomplish some sort of heart and soul rebuild.  i have felt broken for so long, and i’m tired of feeling that way.  but there are peices that don’t fit anymore, and i don’t know how to put me back together.  and i need this journal to help me as i go.  i need to record what is happening with me, instead of keeping so much in.  i need this diary to be my friend, until i can figure out how to be my own friend.

and it doesn’t escape my mind either, that it’s pretty late in my years to start a self journey.  what if i don’t find this peace i crave so badly?  what if i waited too long?  what if it’s all for nothing, and i still wind up dying without ever really knowing who i am?