◎ The Beginning of the Middle
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Good morning, dearest reader. 😊 Welcome back.
Please sit with me, I am tired. Or at least, my mind is. Consider this some whispers in the dark.
I have welcomed you into my pocket, but I know that you have been here since my feet were trudging through the desert, trying to find meaning in collecting and turning over the stones and shards of worlds I have been both delivered, and cast out, from. After the sand, there was rain, after the rain, there was new life. And I did find my feet, didn't I? I didn't want to, but I did. And I want to say I had to, but I think that I had to, not by default necessity, but because that's the kind of person I am. I could have given in, lots of people do. I could have run away, I could have done any number of things I would have rathered have been doing, other than what I felt was right, even though it was a long, slow process of mortification...
I made a reference in some older post about trying to tell whether chapters are ending, or stories are beginning, and I think that I got some clarity yesterday. Last night, specifically. Because you see, yesterday was obscenely difficult, but for some reason I slogged through it and I am proud of myself. I knew it was going to be hard, but I made it. And at the end I had nothing left. Every corner of my heart and mind had been scraped raw by thoughts, feelings, emotions, as if I had been trying to get what I needed to do, done, as if it was not already a task in itself, without having my brain partitioned into a tired scholar sponsored by Visine; a swirling, excited visionary; a tired heart oscillating between screaming and smiling internally, to boot.
But as I lay there last night, having submit my final assignment for the day, in that state of exhaustion so deep that one cannot yet sleep, I experienced a continued rainbow of thoughts and emotions that passed over me like clouds. There was nothing left for them to hold onto but barren rock, where I lived, but they held no sway. And then I got it, DR. I saw all the pieces in front of me as I've described before, and I was able to let something besides my tired mind take over and turn them all over, examining their facets in ways that my tired heart could not turn with bias, either. And I found it.
...
I'm turning 37 in a few days. Not an auspicious 16, not 33 or yet 51, but... caught up. Examined, evaluated, then reconstituted. Grateful and, I think, finally whole. Not because I'm finished, or perfect, but because I'm not really surviving anymore, I'm actually living, and able to experience ups and downs like a person with all of their faculties in line and at their disposal, would. This is no small gift. I have... complete agency. And vision, and drive, and assets... and it is all new and not new. But I know it now, attached to the bedrock of my soul. Like someone who has been seeing with their eyes their whole life, only to have their brain finally kick in to recognise what they've been looking at.
And I have been looking at a new chapter, whilst embroiled in the prologue. Everything... Everything is just a prologue. Every day is a new day, and every book is made of chapters that may be subjective to us but are all just little pages in God's vast library. I am deeply blessed by the colours that have been in, and are, in mine, too.
...
Yesterday I had a post written but I took it down after I kept coming back to rewrite it multiple times. I decided a just needed... a day. I was haunted by something I'd said in a previous conversation: that "nothing keeps me here." As in, my current location. I found I immediately regretted it, and I made myself somewhat sad afterward. What I had meant to say, was that there are no barriers to my going anywhere I want, at any time, if I set my mind to it. I am free. And yet, this statement left out my own agency when I choose to stay... which I do, for reasons that include not just prospects and potentials, for once, but because the thought of leaving stirs emotions I have not felt since the first time I left home. I wanted the person I'd said it to, to know that it is because of friends like them, that I do hold dear.
How many times are we forced or "forced" to make sacrifices, or be "ok" when we are not, in life? I have spent years saying goodbye to people I've wanted to stay close to, and learning skills to survive that I never wanted to have to learn (in addition to the things that I of course, did/do). But when the world feels like it is full of possibilities and paths, I want to remember these things that hurt me to lose, because it hurt because they were valuable.
I want to remember that I had always wanted to live in a world where I said hello more often than goodbye. I want a life where every pain has a glory that makes it worth it. And I don't think it's too much to ask, but I think it can take vigilance to remain open enough to remember what we value. It takes immense, and increasing vulnerability to make good decisions, even after we've otherwise faced challenges, or scarcity, and grief that might turn our faces away from what we've loved, out of self-protection. But we must. Otherwise, in the end, we will have forgotten what made life worth living to begin with, simply so that we could "exist"... and existence is not life.
The end I want is one that starts with this realisation: that I am not as alone as I thought I was, and that that matters to me.
