The batteries on all my devices are nearly dead as I decide it is time I sit down and write. Isn’t that the way it always goes for people like me? The lost kids living a life of unbalanced disarray. Tamed, chaotic messes. Dumpster fire people.
Now more than ever I feel like that is who I am. This version of myself that has always existed below the surface. This little lost girl on an isle of misfit hearts. It burns too dark and people get blistered thinking it’s cold. Dead. Unclaimed. And no. It’s not any of those things. I am a series of sharpened edges held together by scar tissue and maybe a little glitter glue. But I stand in the dark. Don’t get too close. You’ll lose an eye. Or worse.
Life is changing. In almost unbelievable ways. And. Quickly. Even if this period of purgatory has felt like it’s lasted forever. It was time that was needed. And the next stage will also be that. Time I need to figure out what the fuck I am doing with my life and how I will get there.
When you get married there are always certain ideations. The last thing that you consider is being not married. So when that time comes upon you and you’ve spent your entire adult life cradled in a nest of someone else’s making…how do you learn to fly? How do you step off the ledge and trust that your atrophied wings will not let you slam into the earth. Shattered. Broken. Failure.
I guess we don’t get that assurance. That simple joy of certainty. And this is the first time that I have ever experienced such daunting amounts of darkness ahead.
It’s strange right? But everything I’ve ever done has been to the expectations of others. Plans made only somewhat with an image of my future in their making. Mostly I’ve been there along for the ride. Like a hobo on a train. Just hopping cars and hoping for the best.
But I’ve been tossed from the railway. My plans are…lacking in confidence. I know the things that I want to do. The things that drive me. The ones that ignite my heart and cast away that dreaded blackness clouding the path. Impracticality has its drawbacks.
But I am also faced with an opportunity. I have a place to land. People who love me. Things that enrich my experience. Ones I often tend to forget about. Because admitting to yourself that you are worth someone else’s effort…well. That could be the greatest challenge of all.
And how could I not try? How could I stand there and simply walk away from opportunity?
The truth is, I don’t know what I am going to do. How I will live beyond bare minimum anything. How I will get into a real place that is really mine and not belonging to someone else. From one man’s nest to another and back again.
The whole thing makes me sick. Makes me scream into the pillow. Under a blanket. Where my kids cannot see or hear me.
I’ve not ever been so terrified of anything in my whole life. But then. My whole life has been a series of following instructions and falling back.
Now that I’m falling from that nest up on the highest branch, all I have to do is fly. Trust myself. Ha! A sadly laughable idea. But I’m growing into the role. As I fall. And during this drop I remind myself to breathe. To remember that there are these people cheering me on. Loving me from various distances. Offering help in whatever ways they can. My people. These wonderful, beautiful humans who look at me and they see—something. Something worth their effort. Their love. And while I can’t say that I see in me what they do, I can say that I will try to be worthy of them. To earn them.
All this said. My project. My ‘Some Little Piece of Me’…oh how that keeps changing. I have some ideas. And I hope to have something ready between moving and mothering and falling. I think it is through this work. Words. Art. That I learn how to fend for myself. It is there that I exist. Where I am more than that patchwork girl. And it is there where I try to remember my own words. About struggle and life beyond survival. I am surviving. I have done that for 32 years. And I will continue to do so.
So why do I hesitate so hard on the idea of living? Especially when I am already falling?
