"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."

Anatole France

so true...perhaps my uneasiness stems from straddling two worlds. eventually I must let go of the old and my sentimentality is holding on for dear life. the last 15 years have served me so well, independently, strong and able. I valued these things about myself. The new direction requires less sufficiency and more softness, more openness. Those attributes I also value...but they are so vulnerable.

drifter

I’m drifting in and out of motivation and melancholy
Reaching for dry air,
Saturated by the humid nature of myself
Drifting amongst waves of silence and outbursts of passion, that only I can hear
I have no idea what it looks like from the outside, but on the inside it is a pendulum
The equilibrium pivots from death to life in a single breath
Drifting aimlessly without an anchor to pull me back into some semblance of relief
I am not angry, I am not sad, I am ambivalent, kind of numb and troublingly disoriented
The span of 24 hours feels ancient, I forgot what I said, how I reacted or what I even felt
Relaxed, without strain or tension, I coast and forget
Tight and stressed, I recorded every detail of every moment.
Drifting from solitude to a desperate need for interaction
And getting ruffled from the unavailability of myself.
I feel so different from myself
The focus and the determination are slipping and there is a panic to that realization
Will I be me without those attributes?
Is this permanent?
Am I fading?
Am I becoming a fragment of my previous self?
Do I care?
Because I’m not sure that I do.
For once in my life I am not carrying the weight.
For once in my life I do not have puff up and appear greater and stronger than I actually feel.
There is such a liberation going on inside of me without those restraints
But it scares me to wander, to drift too far away from the middle line that I’ve always considered ‘normal’
I despise my immature emotions
I feel foolish with these bursts of feeling, and yet, they are true, they are honest, they are me.
Is it possible that I’ve walked around for 38 years wearing someone else’s skin?
And now that it is shedding, I feel naked…exposed and undeveloped.
I’m not sure where the fear is rooted, going insane? Being vulnerable? Losing everything that society tells me to value?
I am in a state of flux
Drifting around the expanse of my true self and I don’t know how to be.
Who am I?