Sometimes I guess I really don't know where to begin. This is one of those times. I jumped back in with my first post yesterday and it felt good to write. To let it out for me but also to let you know it’s ok if you have those same kinds of feelings. All of your shit is valid - good and bad.
So much has happened and not happened it feels ridiculous to rehash it all, or to put myself through the emotions that come with that. I will be concise when I say a lot of things have changed in my life. Some of those changes have shocked me and shaken me. Others have grounded me and showed me who, and what, I really am. Most have showed the world that I am not to be fucked with. It is clear that my peace has become my priority. And my silence can become deafening.
I have opinions and addressing them has always been easy for me. This is my space, and in my space I am free to move as I wish. I am working to make myself feel like a lot more of the world is my space - learning to take it up and not be apologetic for it - and to demand what I need, when I need it. This hasn't been easy. It is still very much a work in progress. With Covid and my illness, the very idea of taking up physical space scares me to death. But there have been, and will be, more steps toward demanding freedom others around me don't seem to want to share. It's odd to feel like the world has become a place where your existence is not only dismissed, but completely ignored. Then to realize that that feeling and those behaviors are closer to home than you think.
Gaslighting can come from anyone, and I have learned that even those that should be sympathetic, lose that touch when they’re inconvenienced.
Life was hard in the moments when I lacked concentration, when I couldn't figure things out, when words made no sense in a sphere where they once did. I was scared. I am scared. But I realized that’s something that’s not going to go away but I can learn not to operate from that place.
I am an outspoken supporter of therapy, and mental health treatment - whatever that may be or look like to you. In the time that I’ve been gone, I struggled through medicine after medicine, and spoke to therapist after therapist. I stopped sleeping enough to even constitute what any person would really call rest. My Lupus flared because the stress, sadness and overall nothingness of it made it impossible to stay healthy. I was in a constant state of irritability and it went from bad to worse, with no good to be found on the scale. I struggled with what I felt like was the selfishness of it all. I struggled to feel loved when it is obvious I am.
I can’t imagine what the world would be like if I wasn’t.
But still it was hard. It is hard. Every fucking day.
It has been a really rough go.
But in this time I have also made plans, secured ways, made moves. Silently. The way most moves should be made. Not in this day and age it seems. I have plotted. I have been angry enough to push. I have taken care of everything and everyone, so much so that I have forgotten to take care of myself. I have checked my ego at the door, and have really tried to learn and understand the way I work and what I require to exist within my space.
My energy is important to me, too important almost, and I share it reluctantly at best. I have learned because time is a teacher. People say it heals but sometimes I’m not sure. I think it teaches you that there are some things that you might not heal from. And that’s ok too.
I will leave you with this, we aren’t meant to be perfect. Even if perfection is what we are taught to strive for. Perfect is what you make it. It’s whatever lights you up. Time taught me that we end up working so hard toward something so unattainable that we forget that right now is as perfect as it’s going to be.