I'm writing

I’m writing.

I have no idea what I’m doing because I haven’t done this in so long. God, that’s really hard to think about. There is no point to my writing, I’m just doing it because I know it’s the part of me I left in the closet on 280 East when my marriage began to crumble. It’s the part I’ve held away because writing takes blood, and I just didn’t have any of that stuff anymore.

I don’t talk about it. My marriage. I spoke at my aunt’s church, and at a church in Mexia, and I try to shine it up as pretty as I can, but in truth, I haven’t really shared it. What it was like to marry someone who didn’t, and couldn’t love me back. What it was like for my first to be a monster. And what it was like to move through those realities, holding myself together with medication, and late night phone calls, and writing letters.

But writing comes from the heart. My heart is scared. My heart doesn’t always trust itself, and so writing, well, writing got left in a closet from 5 years ago because I just haven’t been brave enough to be a writer. But I want to be.

I could write at the “new” blog. It’s so funny how many blogs I’ve started over the years. There are honestly so many, I can’t even recall where they all are, what the username is, or the password.

When I left my marriage, I couldn’t look in the mirror without seeing an imposter. I couldn’t let myself be pretty. I couldn’t let my hair stay long. I couldn’t wear makeup, or blow dry my hair, or look at my body because, well, I was a stranger who had taken up residence in the skin of someone else, and I didn’t need to get too cozy. That sounds bizarre, but someone out there may understand exactly what I mean.

I couldn’t let myself be myself, because myself had been shoved into a shallow grave of monotony and autopilot and numbness by my husband. It’s hard to be yourself when you know you aren’t yourself. And pretending to be yourself- smiling, laughing, being- feels so unnatural that you hope others won’t notice the bad acting and catch on to the stranger wearing your voice, and face, and clothes.

I died. I just died, but that isn’t why I’m writing. I’m not writing because I died 5 years ago, or three years ago, or whenever it was that I realized that “I” was gone, but I’m writing because I’ve been raised. Brilliantly. Though, it’s scary, sometimes. Being happy is scary. Being hopeful is scary. Carrying on, like nothing had happened, is scary and weird and strange, but it is so remarkably beautiful that human hearts can do something so rare. Die, and return to life.

I’m alive. Maybe more alive than I was the first time. I can’t say. I used to write in my journal, “I miss myself,” but now after these last few years, I’m finding that “self” is not steadfast- under any circumstances. There is not one “self.” There are so many.  There are so many version of ourselves, but I promise myself-and you- this. The self standing right now. The one writing. That self will never leave. She made it. She’s been here all along, and she’s a badass.