Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Go Your Own Way...





“And hope that someday I am able to write down how I figured all of this out.”
-Me, last summer


I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the blog and its purpose and how it has morphed so far from what it started out to be. About the things that I write about, and the things that I don’t, and why exactly I do any of it.

I love to write. I love to write like I love to breathe-it’s my favorite thing in the world to do. Often when I write something down, it’s the first time that I’ve ever realized that particular thought and it sort of catches my breath and I go oh. Huh.

So anyway, naturally, most of my writing doesn’t end up on here. And some of what I have written here is just the loose ends of a girl grappling with a great deal of fear of where to go and what to do next. When life fell apart, I didn’t write anything on the blog for 6 months. I spent 6 long months wondering if I would ever find the words to tell the world about anything happening in my life ever again. And then I wrote that first post after we decided to divorce, the post that told the world, yes, my marriage has ended (and there are many things about that post that embarrass me now) and it broke open a dam inside of me-it was my way of saying, this happened. This mattered.

I don’t know how common my feelings are to other divorced people, but I know that I felt like I was taking an eraser to fifteen years of my life. Like we were saying, oh, we didn’t really mean any of that. And writing down anything-from the shame that I felt over getting divorced to the overwhelming fear that I had of what to do next-it gave this chapter of my life some meaning. I know, of course, in my head that no one thinks that my marriage meant nothing, but I just didn’t know what to do with the pieces that existed in my hands.

Many people at the time came to me and told me that I shouldn’t panic, that I needn’t worry about dating, that the only thing that mattered was the girls…they were words of kindness, but they only served to make me more insecure. I was scared to death of never falling in love again, of living all alone forever, of not having any kind of a plan other than getting up every day and breathing in and out.

So, I wrote it down. I wrote down how scared and all alone and bereft I was. I wrote down guilt and fear and shame and joy and bliss and wonder. I wrote it down so that I could process it, so that I could own it, so that I could understand any of it.

Sometimes I worry that the blog seems to only perpetuate the idea that I was sad and scared and alone. I’m not that anymore (I’m not sad and alone-scared I’m working on). I write about the things that overwhelm me so that I can get a grip on why I’m feeling that way. I write about things that I am ashamed of to allow myself permission to let go of the shame.

I don’t know exactly why this journey took this particular shape. I do know that whenever anyone has told me that they enjoy my blog or relate to some aspect of it, it makes me feel like it is serving a purpose bigger that just me navel gazing. Maybe that’s ludicrous. I have no idea. But what I’m meaning to say is that writing led me through this maze of grief, and now it’s leading me into this brave new world of whatever it is that comes next.

”I do not know what lies around that bend, but I’m going to believe the best does.”
-Anne of Green Gables

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