I have been on every social media site since Myspace was a thing. I was living in Montana at the time in the middle of what would be a 7-year relationship that ended and landed me back in Des Moines in my late twenties. I had started this blog called The Know. I had subscribers and I enjoyed an outlet that allowed me to do what I loved, write. I had been using my words since middle school to vent without allowing my mouth to get me in trouble. I have an inventory full of half used journals that have been lugged around with me since high school. I found reprieve with ink and paper. As we evolved and became digital, I transitioned and modernized to keep up. I will also prefer a book over a Kindle and a journal over a laptop, but I will always find a way to express my thoughts externally. Twenty years later and a few months difference I find myself there again.
I found a journal from 1999 and don’t have the heart right now to open it up and read its contents. I would have been a few years out from graduating high school, a feat all of its own. It would have been around the time my oldest niece was born. Her son recently turned one and all I know is that I am not the woman who started or finished that journey two decades ago. As I sit here in 50-degree weather, sipping coffee, smelling incense, listening to wind chimes and blue jays & crows, I am reminded of one simple truth, I am.
I am not starting over. I am moving on. As of last night, my house is packed. All that can fit into totes are and the bigger items are just waiting it out until it’s moving day. The everyday needs are strung about in my bedroom and bathroom. I have strangers picking up items that will not fit or will not be useful to me in my new location. Packing for me has some deep-rooted trauma that is so visceral, I have to use a self-taught technique to get through it. I have to treat it like I am embarking on an adventure and need to store supplies and not that I am losing a home. I had to make myself home a long time ago. Which is why the items that I have transversed this country with have zero to no value on an insurance claim but are priceless. I have had personal items occupying thrift stores and landfills from North Carolina to Washington, and many places in between. I am literally moving back to my ancestral home, after two divorces and many dwellings in between. The closest I felt to settled was being in La Crosse. I got remarried, I bought the house, I put up the fence, I moved out of private practice, I took off the armor, I laid down roots, and integrated into the community. This location and area have been the longest I have stayed put in decades. I am at that point where I will learn why? I can say it stems from being treated as an option and being disposable. If I can state it, why can’t I change it? This is why I need to move on. I need to take a step back, follow my own work and become my own client.
I don’t “act like…” Correct, I don’t. I am not a performer. I am gritty, edgy and rough around the edges. That is my default and natural disposition. I will never shy away from or feel shame of these qualities. They have kept me alive. For those that are deserving of, I am a natural nurturer with a softness that is as delicate as pollen held on the stamen of a flower but like too much of the sun, I can burn others also. I have to be mindful of the dualities that make up my existence. Whether others like it or not I am not something simple, I am complex. I didn’t ask for this. I learn from it every day and I will die never being an expert of my own creation. I am aware of this. I will transition into the next form an utter stranger of the last. I am not fake. I cannot fake emotions, facial expressions or energy. This does not make me mean, nor incapable of being mindful. My mind is full, every nanosecond of living. Until spirit says its time, I will continue to learn and grow. I need to make sure I am an ambassador for myself as much as I have been for others. I am not done yet. I am human and this woman I have morphed into deserves the amount of time I have spent helping others.
I have come to acknowledge It may be that I am not supposed to be partnered or to live domestically with another. I have only come to recently embrace in its entirety my sexuality. This seems like more options but in reality, for a neurodivergent brain can lead to being overwhelmed. I am bad at love because those who have uttered those words have been those who have hurt me the most and I can’t still love myself. So that is the space that I am moving into. I might have to squeeze myself into a space that spec of sand couldn’t make a home in but damn it I am doing it.
I am returning from an epic journey that birthed a saga that I refused to allow others to write for me. I became the bearer of my own script, and I will be the documentarist of my own ending. I am coming home to me.