Through the Looking Glass

I started writing a blog about where I am in life and how I feel about it. “I am not the woman I thought I’d be at 48 years and 9 months… blah blah blah…” All this stuff was pouring out. All relevant and true, but it was just getting longer and longer. I kept feeling like I was done and then more words kept showing up on the paper.  I stopped to read it and thought, “Damn, that’s a lot of shit bottled up.” I mean, I started my blog as a way to share my thoughts and ideas, but it’s not meant for me to fall down a rabbit hole of woe.

I figured I needed to simplify. Not just because it was too damn much for anybody to read, but because for my own sanity I needed to pick the running themes underneath and then start doing the work. I don’t think it’s anything that different from what a lot of us are feeling right now. We all went through Covid and losses and the void of 2020. Even as we “lost“ a year of events- birthday celebrations, holidays, family time, school, in some cases work and on and on and on… we didn’t lose the emotional bruises all of that left. Grief. Fear. Depression and anxiety. Black folks as a whole lost a little more sanity and gained a whole lot of trauma to tuck away. Watching folks who look like you, talk like you and live like you get killed for just living, is a nightmare. As if we needed more abrasions embedded in our DNA to pass on to a new generation. Maybe it’s age catching up, but inequities and disparity and disrespect are weighing on me more than ever before. This sense of dissatisfaction overall and of shrinking inside. We all picked up emotional things we haven’t had a place to put down. Time marches, but it leaves a mark. Especially when you get to feeling like it’s marched without you, or made you late for an important date with yourself. Ever want to leave it all behind and see what’s through the looking glass?

I’ve narrowed how I feel into some bite sized pieces. ((The trick will be not to choke!)) There is a stillness in me. Not a calm or placid stillness. Its the stillness that comes in that millisecond between fight or flight. I feel unseen even though in a way more people are hearing my voice. I feel like I’m here for my life, but not completely present if that makes sense. Out of step. Like Alice eating the potion to shrink when she should be growing to reach the doorknob. Being here is to be where I need to be; to go to work, to provide for my family. Here is taking up space. Being PRESENT is to show up and engage. To show grace and gratefulness. To have reciprocal energy with the things around me. In the “here” space, I’ve got a sense of accomplishment overshadowed by resentment and some guilt. The “here” space is knowing I need to find balance between doing what’s best or right and doing what feels good and matters to me. They are always necessarily the same. Being PRESENT is where I want to be. There is no point in going into the WHY of why I feel this way. That’s something for me to lay out and figure out and/or get some therapy to help me work though. I definitely miss therapy. (Although I’ll skip it if it’s on a mushroom with that fat ass Cheshire cat throwing out cryptic messages behind billows of smoke.) 

I know I have some work to do.  I know I need to show up for myself the same way I show up for my family and my patients and friends. I know that if I don’t see myself clearly, it won’t really matter who else sees me. One of my favorite affirmations is “When you know who you are, they can’t tell you who you aren’t”. I stand by that. Knowing yourself is important all the time, but particularly when you feel unseen.  Those moments of invisibility are the times when you change to accommodate other things and people and before you know it, you are lost in Wonderland. Chasing the rabbit, trying to get somewhere you aren’t even sure you should be.

I was thinking by writing this out I’d hit some magic space where an answer would be waiting. An epiphany. There isn’t one. That’s what therapy and a few billows of smoke are for. One thing I do know – if I want to be seen, all I need to do is see myself. It’s amazing to be seen through other people, to have other people acknowledge you, but seeing yourself is how you stay grounded and find your way back when you get lost. Being present is a choice that has to be made everyday.  Stillness can be the moment you need to see how far you’ve come.

Be well. You matter.