write my Self to life

on absence, mental health and my love of writing

It has been quite awhile since I posted and yet it as if no time has passed at all. Life feels like a daily struggle to stay in my center and navigate the intense world around me. Time is an enigma, as are my memories and experience of myself. But I am coming back to writing with the intention of leaning into writing my way through the barriers and blocks that continue to get in my way. Writing my way back to what I love most…writing. Writing my way back to my Self.

There are so many things that keep me from writing. My belief that I have nothing important to say. The old pattern of just keeping the soft animal of my body from loving what it loves out of fear of losing it. The intense anguish and confusion of the rebirthing process I am moving through. Most days it is just all too much and I retract my soft vulnerable underbelly into my shell and just wait.

Photo by Mike Dierken on Unsplash

Wait for it to get better, wait for my sharp mind and wit to return, wait for it all to pass, wait for the brain fog to be burned off by the bright light of my internal creative fire, wait for my passionate love of writing to return — but its not returning. I feel like I am waiting for a lover to return, to come back to me after leaving with no notice. But this lover is not returning and so, I will have to seek her out. I will have to write through the absence until I find my way back to her

So I am beginning again, one post at a time, one love letter at a time, one day at a time to just write, to put myself out there, to pull myself out of my protective shell and allow my soft belly to be exposed. It is the only path forward, the only way through the grief of separation and loss of Self I am experiencing. It will not be perfect, it will be messy and others will see that mess and I have to be okay with that because going through this world alone is just not an option anymore.

In full transparency, my mental health has not been good. The isolation, the loss of my former life and my former self, the state of the world has brought me to my knees and pushed me to the edge of my limits. My body, my mind and my soul have been obliterated. I said to my therapist this week that the truth is there is absolutely nothing left after this process of death I have been through. Nothing but the essence of my being strewn in the ashes — no dross, no chaff, no masks, just pure me.

I know I am there. I can sense it. But I am an apparition. I am flying blind. I keep searching, sifting, sorting through the rubble, finding small shiny bits here and there but literally cannot see how to assemble them into a new sense of Self, into a new way of being in the world. The process is nebulous, fragmented and like nothing I have ever experienced before. I have rebirthed myself many times but nothing like this. This feels like assembling a puzzle in the dark, leaning into intuition, focusing on one piece at a time, trusting my tactile senses and hoping that it all comes together into some semblance of myself — a Self I have never known.

Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

Writing helps. Not neat, succinct, well crafted writing but what some might call bad writing, messy writing, the raw real deal. Crafting myself through words. But herein lies the challenge. In order to do that, I have let go of the idea that what I put out into the world has to be this neat little package complete with pristine wrapping paper and a bow. I have to let myself do brown-paper-and-duct-tape writing (which honestly just made me cringe inside).

So that is where I am and what I am committing to do for myself. To write myself back into existence, back to life, into a new Me. I feel so honored that anyone would even want to read or follow along with me on this journey. So if you are here and you are reading this thank you. If you are in a similar place of feeling decimated by the past few years of life, please comment, reach out, connect. It is so healing to feel less alone. And the truth is, we are all in this together whether we know it or not.