I’m still reading through old journals, still flirting with the past. Reading myself into existence and floored by the lack of memories I hold in my head for what I wrote on the page. Sometimes I want to keep reading just to see how it ends. Right now I am in the chapter where I’m 30 and wrestling with the concept of marriage and wanting my boyfriend to love me more. From my 48 year old vantage point, I see how utterly scared I was about commitment.
This story I find myself in today is a good one. I have secured a peaceful marriage and happy family; even with D breaking his jaw and the cascading impacts of the past 6 weeks, which rattled my reality to the bones.
When I was young, I believed the best was yet to come. Of course, something better was headed my way. How could I not feel that way? There was so much muck to shovel out from as a child.
I don’t know what the days before me will bring, but I do believe they are beautiful. I still think they are versions of me that will surprise me. I have yet to uncover that stone of worthiness that will make me feel most aligned. I still ache to believe in myself more and become this beautiful creative being I know exists. She’s always been there: my own private Stevie Nicks.
I still crave love; I still crave being loved. I fear that feeling will never subside because of my childhood experiences. I am left to my own devices, my own survival skills, which are to tell myself, “I’m a good kid. I am enough. I am beloved.”
I’m not really sure why I feel so vulnerable these days. I crave the paths I didn’t take as much as the one I’m on. I want to wrap my arms around all the possibilities of love and take them in to fill that giant hole of emptiness that sometimes calls out and comes for me. I doubt anything will ever feel like enough. Perhaps that’s why my desire to create is stirring still well into middle-age. As if I conjured something big and beautiful from the unseen, I could thrust it into this space of inadequacy and seal it up once and for all.
But I know it will always be with me somehow: Crying out from the moments I failed to step up; echoing from the memories I regret; sneaking up in the middle of the night when I am most unencumbered. It likes to remind me that I can’t trust myself because of all the times I seemingly stumbled through the lesson.
But what it doesn’t know, what it cannot understand, is that I have shifted shape. Sometimes I smile at myself in the mirror and look out from these baby blues and find something hopeful to focus on, something that makes me feel light. I call back all those moments of connection and wholeness and intuition. I stand firm in my being, planted in the years I have survived, and I know with all certainty, I’m doing just fine.