I have been going through a transition for awhile now. And it has been hard. Not harder than anyone else’s transitions, but moving from one period of time in life to another. And it does appear that when you are changing from one version of yourself to another, it underscores just how much one person can contain completely opposite feelings about oneself.
On the one hand, I am glad to be changing. On the other, I resist it far more than I should or is productive.
My life is pretty stable. It is pretty good most of the time. I have a great deal of meaningful relationships, with my friends, my family, my kids, meaningful work I love, writing which keeps me balanced and sane. I have a program that I work to the best of my ability daily. I have enough money to enjoy a comfortable way of living. I have enough. And there is little drama or trauma in my life these days, as compared to years ago when drama and trauma reigned supreme.
I would make the bold statement that my life has never been more stable, enjoyable and peaceful. But at the very same time, I would tell you that this has been a very hard time. Like I am rounding a corner that I have successfully been putting off for years. Somehow always circumventing the actual rounding of this corner. Like I would get so far, and then I would just do something to cause me to start the whole path all over again.
And it was easy to point to others and blame them for my never getting “there”. So easy, in fact, that I deluded myself for years. But today, I see the truth and I accept it. It was never them, it has always been me. Afraid to round that corner, even though I cannot tell you why I feared it, or fear it still.
I think there is some truth about myself that I have been terrified to face, and am sure that ugly truth is all that awaits me when I round that particular bend. And so I have become masterful at not rounding it. Always believing the story I tell myself that this rounding is not necessary now, not required of me, not needed and certainly not wanted.
And that worked, for a very, very long time. And I believed my own delusion until I didn’t anymore.
And so I am now in the arc of that particular curve, the one I have resisted forever. And this moving from one version of myself to another, this has been very hard work indeed. And I will admit that I have thought about not proceeding. I have thought about leaving the task undone. Going back to the beginning, again, and starting over. However, I so do not want to cover that same ground again. I have seen this particular stretch of road, of myself, far too often that the scenery beyond bores me and makes me kind of sick. Actually quite sick now that I think about it.
It is a momentous day when one can see that the Groundhog Day like existence has been a fruitless endeavor. Always having the ingredients to change but never finding the willingness to do so. Instead being content to walk along that road so far, and then to double back with certainty that going back to the beginning will somehow change the trajectory.
For me, it feels like I have been at this turning point for years. And instead of making progress, I keep selecting a path that ensures that I am to never make any real progress at all...
And I have tried, to make progress, and I have failed repeatedly. And I don’t believe it is completely wasted time or effort. I apparently needed every traipse down that particular road. I needed to see those same sights repeatedly. I needed to tell myself that the journey was different, even though it wasn’t at all.
And I finally know why I was destined to keep making the same mistake over and over again...I lacked faith that it could ever be different. That I could be different. And so it feels like an amazing ask, a monumental task, to proceed in another direction still lacking faith that it could be different, that I could be different...yet here I am.
Refusing to be derailed. Refusing to pass that way again. Refusing to kid myself one more time. I can see now that my insistence that I am strong enough to handle anything, is the very same thing that has kept me stuck for decades.
So I find that the hardest transitions I have ever experienced are the ones where I move from one version of myself to another. This change within one being, hard, arduous and intensely personal and taxing. But I also know that this change within myself is the only thing that will set me free. The only thing to change me from this person who walks the same road insisting that this time it will be different, and the person who has the courage to abandon that road altogether and move onward even though the path is unclear. Trusting that the way shall appear if I just put one foot in front of the other.
Again.
Still.
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