I keep staring at this blank page. I don’t have a strong focus on what to write yet I’m pulled to write as it helps me feel connected when I am so disconnected.
I’m trying to rebuild a routine and still manage recovery. I am so much better than where I started yet so far from everything that came before.
People are moving forward as they should yet I feel so left behind. I reach out for a few moments of connection. It’s a good exchange sometimes even talking about “soon”. Soon we’ll get together. Soon we can do X or Y. I like to think soon will happen and then I get tired, anxiety sets in, sadness for what’s no more. I don’t know if soon will ever come.
This current me is a stranger. No longer confident she can do anything and everything. No longer able to compartmentalize or be pragmatic. Unsure how to use her voice, express herself, not even sure it matters.
There are some pockets of that previous version person who pops up from time to time. Someone will message me a question or I do get to talk to someone and the knowledge and skills I worked hard to develop shine through.
It shines through but I can’t go back. Even if I had frozen the theater and all it was until I was ready, it would never be the same. I loved improv and perhaps if I wasn’t where I lived I could love it again. Maybe in time, I will again, but for now, I know it is no more.
So I try to move forward since time is determined to do just that. My children are no longer young and this is an opportunity to be together. It is also isolating. Raising my kids has always been isolating. Through no one’s fault, I’ve done this mostly on my own for a long time. In many ways, I feel I’m back to those difficult and long days of the toddler years. Alone in the house with three boys. Each with their own personalities pulling me in separate ways as they try to figure out who they are and what they need. It can be suffocating yet the thought of them growing up and making their way in the world as I stay behind is unnerving.
I don’t have an identity at the moment and when the role of mother changes once more I fear I will lose myself completely. These are things I used not worry about. Perhaps it was because I tucked them back in the dark parts of my brain willing them to stay there unable to handle the emotional cascade that would follow. So I look for things to do to help discover, grow, adapt, and change. Anything that feels expressive with the hope it connects and restrains the loneliness that continues to sprout. Thus far nothing. The silence is deafening.
This transformation isn’t complete and there will be the other side. I’m walking the path without a destination longing for signposts along the way. Willing myself to take compassion on me. To allow the darkness to crawl in and stay for a while. Mourn, grieve, break, and heal.
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