existing in the in between

the first post-breakup entry

Many times now I’ve come to this draft, rewriting it and then leaving it be. Each time I come back to it I delete whole paragraphs, write new ones, feel too vulnerable, then close my laptop.

There is more I learn about myself every day. More uncovered, unearthed. Dug up with my bare hands, really.

My seven year relationship ended a few months ago, and I have been shifting into an unknown territory. I see myself in a raw light. I don’t try to fill the emptiness with something shallow. I don’t numb it. But I don’t make a home out of it either. I live in between. All of life is now a mirror.

I think that in many ways I have been absent from my own life, occasionally going with the flow, but mostly resisting. I’ve tried with Buddhism, I’ve tried with meditation, I’ve tried with journaling to enter into a true sense of presence and knowing, but I think I’ve spent most of my life running from parts of myself. I was trying to bypass all the harder things I had to look at and just get to the calm, the stillness. I didn’t know that I had to wade through the muck to get there.

“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.”
Emily Dickinson