Moving On

How often in life do we change?  We want to believe that we change daily but most of us spend inordinate amounts of time trying NOT to change.  To get back to that place where we were.

Then.

You know what I'm talking about but just for kicks, let me jog your memory:

• That time when you were thinner, prettier, healthier. 
•  That time where you felt like you were enough.  
• That one special moment of clarity or insight.  
• That time where you were right (or righteous).  
• That time where you solved everyone's problems.
• That time where it all worked out just like it's supposed to.
• Happily ever after.  
• Good triumphed over evil.  

So that we don't have to look at NOW.

A while back there was a story going around on facebook or elephant journal or somewhere about life being a river.  It's a buddhist or some similarly enlightened perspective that explains you can never touch the same spot in a river twice....the river has already moved on.  This metaphor really resonates with me when I need to understand that I'm doing it again.  Looking behind me at what was.

I can't quite think of what is safe, kind or acceptable to post on the subject of my past year.  The life I thought I had, the person I thought I was, my likes and dislikes-have all fallen away in an incredible shit storm of destruction.  My life ended-at least what I thought was my life.  And just like all life, once that incarnation ended...something new started.

My faith tells me that in order for something to be forgiven, something has to die.  My idea of myself died last year.  My idea of my life died.  I can't really quite describe it.  My favorite girl G describes it as Brutiful.  It was BRUTAL.  It was beautiful.  Like forest fires burning down on the mountain.  Like stars exploding as they pass through our atmosphere.  Like a Tsunami bearing down on you.

 It was so hard and awful, there were points during last year where I could not believe I was still actually alive-respirating and completing cell division like a good little multi-cellular organism.  Then I would start sobbing or shaking or raging and I would remember-Oh yes, I am very much still alive.


And somewhere in those ashes, something amazing and mundane started to happen.  I began to grow and be reborn in ways that I could not have handled in my old life.  With my old ideas of myself.

I can read through my old blog posts and find snippets of the real me trying to peek out.  I can see now that the playlist was written all along and the next act was coming.  But I wasn't quite ready to take the step.  The step that would end my comfortable, suffocating existence as a people pleasing over-achiever.  That step that would call into question the fairy-tale I was trying so desperately to tap dance along with.  So, someone else did that for me.  I had been dancing on the edge of a giant cliff for my entire adult life.  And someone finally threw me over it.

THANK GOD.  


For the first time in a long time....I am listening to my heart and making decisions that further my own growth.  I am breaking my own heart open in an effort to keep swimming in the river.  I am working hard to sit in kindness and love.


Maybe this will be a place where I can work out my heart through writing.  Or maybe it's time for this blog to pass away too.  Time will tell.  Until then.