As a child, in my mind, when I pictured the change from one year to another, it presented to me visually as climbing back up a steep hill from December to January. It's odd, I know, but I've always been a visual person. It also gives me a chance to reflect on where I am, where I'm going, and what is meant to be.
Last year, in my personal opinion, was probably the worst year of my life since I was in my late twenties. There is not one aspect of my life that hasn't blown apart in the last 365 days. To say that my sense of self-worth is low would be overstating low. I have none. I don't even feel strong enough to go out and pursue a new direction.
But that doesn't move me forward. or sideways, or even backwards. It just keeps me stuck. Joyce Meyer says that frustration is a sign that I am acting independently, apart from the design the Creator has for my life. So I am watching myself carefully for that sense of not belonging to my own skin. Cocooning away from irritations in my real world in order to put my internal strife into place, I find a small growing kernel of self taking shape where previously there was only dissatisfaction with my own actions.
I have resentments I have carried for years still hanging on my shoulders, old friends I cannot seem to separate from on this journey toward peace. My heart pleads 'Some day', while my head screams 'Never', and I understand regret.
I've allowed hurts, real and imagined, to take root where previously only trust and confidence grew, and I stagger through the weight of failure and I understand my weakness.
But perhaps worst of all, to protect those I love, I tried to take it all on me, and forgot that this life is a shared voyage. I became the martyr I always swore again and I understand now what breaking truly costs.
It's time to stop, drop, and roll. We only have one shot through this life, and regrets are anchors pulling my soul to inaction. I cannot stay in this morass and I cannot find my way through, so I spend hours wondering. It's no way to live. It's time to once again learn to breathe in the air of acceptance and return to who I am, stop trying to ignore the truth of what comprises me.
Once, as a teenager, my father stopped me in a hallway to tell me I was the one of his children most like himself, and that he pitied the journey that would take me on. How sad that it has taken me forty years to understand the wisdom of those words. As a teen, it filled me with pride to be compared to my father, who I idolized. It's only as I look back that I realize the curse of being who we are.
When you can see the truth of a person, how to you reconcile their actions?
So I have decided this year to search for the woman who has somehow gotten left behind in all of this upheaval. The one who knew her own mind and had dreams she wanted to chase. through addictions, and rejections, and loss and growth, the one who at the heart of it all only wants to be loved. I do not know where this road will lead, nor am I particularly afraid. At the end of things, it is only myself that I am chasing, not an unknown enemy. Who knows better than I the distractions I can throw to keep from success?
As a child I often found myself hiding in the back of closets and under the bed, trying to hid but from what I never knew. How sad it is now to figure out the person I was hiding from was myself.
