The Eve of the Eclipse

The eve of the eclipse, a random Sunday, and suddenly I’m overwhelmed by the need to glance back a nearly decade old blog I started when I was at (one of) my lowest points.

Crazy how fast time flies, how it slips away when you aren’t looking. How it glides past, even when your eyes are firmly on it, tracking each moment with razor precision.

I am not the same person I was when I wrote those posts all those years ago. And I am exactly that person still.

I plan on going back and editing my past posts to remove names, but beyond that, I’m going to let them stand. They are exactly what I needed to read today; they show me that, while I feel the same, I am a wholly new version of myself.

My original goal when I first started the Sad Sack Monologues was to deep dive in to the why behind my actions. Why was I always paralyzed from moving forward, why did I always seem to shoot myself in the foot, why was I incapable of growing up. It turns out, a lot of the answers to those questions were not true answers at all. I just needed more time than most to grow up. And growing up, for me, meant realizing a person never really grows up; you just learn to be okay with constant growing pains, with constant change.

I am not a cutter (still a weird looking word typed out) anymore. I cannot even recall the last time I self harmed; it’s been, well, nearly a decade. Now, the lower part of my left arm is a cascade of tattoos – flowers, a tiger, my son’s Big Three astrology signs. The scars are faint and only visible from an angle in bright sun light. My husband (the one who was previously the fiance) never has to hide the knives.

I graduated from the MLT program I last wrote about starting, and work in a lab now. I enjoy what I do, even if it isn’t my passion. It’s given me security and built up my self esteem; I love helping others, but indirectly – forever an introvert, hiding in the lab is my ideal spot in the tapestry of healthcare.

The largest, brightest, most beautiful change in my life was the birth of my son. He is everything. He is sunlight and moonlight and every star in the sky. He fills me with helpless, relentless joy (and exhaustion). I cannot hate myself anymore, because I can’t risk that hatred bleeding down to him, coloring his world grey when he deserves to live in thriving color.

I wish I could go back in time and sit with myself a while, make her a cup of tea and gently remove whatever alcohol she was gulping from her hand. Tell her it will be okay. Tell her the loathing never really stops, but the capacity to shove it aside grows. Hold her hand and just be with her a while. She was so incredibly lonely. I am still lonely, yes; I will always struggle within my own mind, but I am not buried in my sadness any longer. Part of it is parenthood and married life – I cannot wallow, others depend on me putting one foot in front of the other, so I do.

I have mended myself, stitched up as many broken places as I can reach, the ones that don’t hurt too much to touch. Some wounds remain open and bleeding, but they will eventually clot.

I just need a bit more time.