In search of a rhythm
a familiar beat
longing for purpose
my soul starving
I rest to ignore my hunger
awake in search of something I can't name
there's noise everywhere
but no melody
restless in my comfort
aching to feel alive
I crave the warmth of a strangers smile
yet can't meet my own gaze 
I am a liar to myself
and she knows it

REPRIEVE

In March of 2020, as the world began shutting down, I found relief in the respite. A welcome reprieve that offered me the opportunity to catch my breath, without understanding the gravity of what was about to hit the world.

In the two years prior, I had started a new career, and began struggling with some health issues. My job as a hygienist was the last stake – tethering me to the crisis phase of my life. Once I left, I felt like my body knew it could stop fighting, retreat from it’s ready-to-pounce stance, and it did.

I lost weight, experienced dizzy spells, stopped producing hormones, and my running performance declined further. I found myself frightfully aware that this dependable vehicle that had taken me through storms, over unsurmountable obstacles, and grand adventures, was not so dependable anymore. I had demanded so much of myself over the past 20 years. I just needed to rest, lay down, and be still.

The problem was, I did not identify with this need and refused to honor it – refused to honor myself. I thought it represented weakness, and impending failure. I did not want to be that person who didn’t have the energy to show up. I only identified with the girl who charged into the face of anything; fearless and unwavering. I felt ashamed of this tired and weak version of myself. Worthless. So I did what I had always done – kept charging. The only difference was that I no longer had the capacity to fill myself with everything I was for sustenance. Instead, I began carving out the space inside me, creating a void, and surmounting debt. Over the course of the 3 years from 2018-2021, I burned up every last bit of her until I became a fragile shell encasing an empty void.

SHUT DOWN

The company I worked for at the time was wonderful. They pulled us out of the field and although we had scheduled company calls, and simple daily tasks – the main message from leadership was encouraging us to take care of ourselves and our families. I felt incredibly grateful for this, and initially found myself delighting in the time at home with Jared and the kids, while the days melted into one another, no end or beginning – just a constant stream of comfort.

COMFORT

comfort is no destination
it is merely a stop on your way to somewhere else
comfort is not a purpose 
it is a dangerous thief 
that will trick you into believing you belong there
in it
until you're suffocating in the stagnant air
suspended in nothingness
choking in that warm embrace that once lured you 
imprisoned in it's lies

My comfort soon turned to tremendous guilt. While the world was falling apart outside my door, I sat warm inside my home. I experienced no changes in my income, and no threat to my job security. I had a life partner to endure with, and was never alone. My kids were healthy. Although my dad had (has) cancer, his prognosis was good and he was in remission. As things progressed, and because of my dads increased risk, eventually, we were not able to see my parents in person at all. I existed in this guilty angst, ashamed of my privileged misery.

RITUAL

I found myself at this time grasping for something I couldn’t name. Almost overnight, a glass of wine became a nightly ritual without fail or falter. Sadly, some nights I had looked forward to it all day – the one thing that was predictable and consistent in my comfortable little world. My evenings were not characterized by an excess of anything – at least initially. Just a simple representation of something to look forward to during a time when unpredictability was the only thing I could count on.

By nature, I am an extremely ritualistic person with a tremendous amount of self control. I’ve always prided myself on this. If I decide to give something up, I just do it without any wavering or struggle. I do this with people too. If someone is toxic for me, or a relationship painful, I just walk away and leave it. No longing, no allowing myself to miss or yearn for any part of it. I recognize now that I’ve always closed off this part of myself. It’s as if I never want to be plagued by wanting for something I couldn’t, or shouldn’t, have. I possess a strong aversion to grief – it represents a place I never want to go for fear I might get stuck there as life passes me by.

GRIEF

It occurred to me that this disallowment most likely stems from leaving my childhood in Greentree. All at once, everything changed, and in the spirit of self preservation, I just adapted in the only way I knew how – to pretend that where I was going would always be better than where I was. I have manipulated myself over the years, disguising this strategy as optimism, when truly it was just a lie I told myself.

I didn’t like leaving my Greentree family and friends. I didn’t care about a nice new house or the excitement of a new school. I wanted to stay carefree, spending my days outdoors in movement and adventure; completely immersed in the moment. Present. Continuing my purpose of simply residing in the shared joy and laughter of my companions, and what the day would bring.

My childhood was everything a childhood should be – and more. It was magical. I just wish I had had a more natural transition out of it, a flow state through which I passed, like a change in seasons. To the contrary, it was one of those abrupt stops that left me with no choice other than to embrace it, and accept in an instant without the time or space to interpret my loss. I became driven by this relentless need to keep the momentum going in life with blinders on.

Up until very recently, I feared the loss of momentum for what I might find in the stillness. I had been anxious for what may be waiting there for me to be acknowledged into existence; the call of sadness and grief, staring back at me from the quiet. I have resisted this with all of me, as I am the keeper of others pain, but most certainly not my own.

The truth is, I’ve never really grieved the way my childhood ended, and how the difficult years began. I never allowed myself to. In some ways I think I’ve been trying my whole life to return to that place, that street with the house that butted up against the railroad tracks, and what it represented.

The one positive this compartmentalization created, was that it became natural for me to fully immerse myself in the moments of life – however painful or joyful they were. I filled myself with all of me in these moments which lent to living my life in full color and surround sound – searing meaningful memories in my heart and soul.

Until the pandemic hit. There was no color, no music, and the only way to exist in such a space with all of me, was to maintain a flatness so foreign that my existence felt restless and uneasy. I was in search of a frequency to vibrate, landing only in a monotone hum with no melody.

SUMMER

In June of 2020, Hayden graduated from High School. The uncertainty of his Senior year weighed heavily on me. Along with the guilt I still carried for those years as a single mom, I had adopted a new sense of inadequacy knowing that there was nothing I could do to change things, other than make the best of it.

True to form, Hayden never complained or demanded it be different. He’d simply brush it off, recognizing that there was nothing particularly difficult about it for him compared to the rest of the world. There it is again – this absence of bad or good – just a numb state of nothingness that leaves us feeling undeserving, not allowing ourselves to grieve our own unique experience. I understand now, that absence of feeling is far worse than any sadness or grief – at least for myself.

BOTTOM

My running continued to suffer during this time to the point where I just stopped altogether. It was too emotionally painful to get out and try anymore; only to be left disappointed, crying, and walking myself home.

This was the last straw for me. The last piece of real selfish joy I had abandoned in myself. I had completely undone every part of me until I no longer could look at myself in the mirror because all that was looking back at me was a scared little girl, wishing that someone would come get her and bring her back. And that someone was me.

Having a drink or two every night was now the norm for me, and usually three or four on the weekends. I didn’t have binges or blackouts, just a perfectly sustained nightly routine, convincing myself that this was a ritual I could not, and did not want to give up. I defined this as a treat I owed myself for enduring the days, surrounded by nothingness inside – contrasted by frightening pain, turmoil, and sadness on the outside.

This habit that I settled into, was a cultural norm that I could justify considering it didn’t impact my work or my family – it simply stole everything that was me. I was a quieter, dulled version of myself but in no way, resembled any description of alcoholism I’d ever been willing to hear. I had experienced many seasons in my adult life when I wouldn’t drink at all – sometimes for years on end because it just didn’t serve me. Yet this period of my life was different. Each time I would decide to reduce my intake or take a dry month, I’d adhere for a little bit and then somehow find myself right back in my ritual, justifying it in one way or another.

SHAME

At my core, I was fully aware that I had abandoned myself. It was like I had discarded this broken person, frustrated with her lack of dependability, and no longer possessing the energy to care. I knew alcohol had never served me in the past, aware that my body just couldn’t process it in any amount. This wasn’t necessarily visible to others on the outside, even my family, yet it was all consuming on the inside. Like a siren getting louder and louder as it nears until I could no longer ignore the volume of my own voice, and the urgent nature at which it rose.

This behavior had carved out my insides, fueled by shame and fatigue. Shame because I continued to treat myself poorly while discarding my awareness, cloaked in the excuse that everyone else was doing the same thing and seemed fine. Fatigue because I had been fighting for so long, and no longer had the sustenance of purpose, community, and movement; the very things that have always carried me through my most daunting challenges.

CHANGE

Christmas of 2020 was a struggle. We didn’t spend it with my parents who lived just 5 minutes away because of the risks, and although we went through the motions of tradition with the kids, I was empty. It was at this time that I finally decided to make some changes, set some goals, and actually stick to them. January 3rd, 2021 was a Monday so it seemed like a good starting point.

SOBER

sober 

adjective (sober, soberest)

not affected by alcohol; not drunk.

 • serious, sensible, and solemn: a sober view of life | his expression became sober
 • free from alcoholism; not habitually drinking alcohol: I've been clean and sober 
   for five years.
 • muted in color: a sober gray suit

verb

 • make or become sober after drinking alcohol: [with object] : that coffee 
   sobered him up | [no object]:I ought to sober up a bit.

 • make or become serious, sensible, and solemn:[no object]: his expression sobered her | 
   (as adjective sobering) : a sobering thought.

The word sober describes my life long removal of alcohol. I am a non-drinker. Other than that, none of the above definitions describe me, or who I am. I simply decided to remove alcohol from my life once and for all.

I don’t crave it, or have a skewed view of my need for it to make me whole, or make my life fun. The positive things I mistakenly associated with alcohol are more present in my life than they ever were while I had a drink in my hand. I have returned to myself: clear, present, connected, and energetic. My shame is gone, and I am no longer dependent on something that was holding me in a hollow space of nothingness – muted under a meaningless blanket of comfort.

Somewhere along the way, in my search for community, connection, and purpose during the pandemic (and probably long before that) I misdefined a drink as a vehicle that would bring me to a place of togetherness. It did everything but. Alcohol took me away from myself and created a barrier between me and the raw, colorful world that surrounded me.

RETURN

Through the process of writing about my life, and reflecting on all the experiences that have made me who I am, it is all so clear to me now. I have always sought out those places, and people, who represented and allowed me freedom without resistance, freedom of my physical being, and more importantly, freedom of spirit.

I have felt most at home, most secure, when I am allowed to be all of me without apology or justification. I no longer have to hold all of me inside, like I once believed, utilized as a reservoir to draw on in solitude.

This process has revealed that my driving need and desire has always been to simply return to that girl I once was, before the confines of life and responsibility misdirected me, and made me believe I couldn’t be her, and succeed in this grown-up world. I now understand that for me to succeed and flourish, I must return to her; honor that girl who just wants to be with her tribe, connect on a deep level, while running untethered and freely through the world around her.

When I really stopped and thought about it, is it such a bad thing to want to return to yourself and who you were as a child? It seems natural to me. I understand now why I resisted this for so long. I was afraid of yearning for something I shouldn’t, or couldn’t, have; longing for a time in my life that I never quite grieved the loss of.

It’s not about becoming a child again, it’s about honoring a spirit that is with us our whole life – from start to finish. How we smother it, stuff it down, and try to shove it in a corner because we don’t know how to love it through the growing. It wilts in our neglect – at least mine did.

BEGINNING

This is not the end of my story. In a lot of ways, it is just the beginning. I am embarking on an adventure into uncharted territory, armed with the knowledge of my experience, and the wisdom to honor it.

I don’t expect to be perfect, and often find myself allowing for stillness while taking deep breaths. I am often overcome with gratitude these days. I pause in it, consume the experience with all of me, and give thanks to be wherever it is I find myself – in that moment. I work to stay fully present, and aware of such a precious gift. The gift of this one, grand, and beautiful life.