Talk about massive upheaval. All of it was for a good cause, and I'm very glad to say that I love where I am now. So much has happened in the two weeks since I left the midwest, and it's ironic that as much as I use imagery and description as an author, the only thing I can compare it to is like popping a really massive pimple. You know, the kind that you just squeeze even a little, and it bursts all over the bathroom mirror and you have to get the Windex before your mom screams at you because she just cleaned this bathroom and what, were you raised in a barn?!
Seriously. In two weeks I've lost eleven pounds, fixed my plantar fasciitis that I've suffered through since January of last freakin' year, changed my self-image, love looking in the mirror, regained the ability to smile and laugh, and bought a punching bag.
Dude! Me! Meek little pacifist me. I talk a lot, because that's all I really need. Hate violence. Who needs it when you have the ability to reduce someone to their butthurt little inner child in ten words or less?
Well, unless you're a spider, in which case fuck you, I squish you dead.
But yeah, punching bag! Really great for the lats (mine were screaming bloody hell the next day, which was awesome), and really great for repressed rage. Lemme tell you, I thought that shit was buried so far down that only the cold tentacles of the Eldritch Gods would find it in the murk. Nope! One, two, three punches on that thing showed me a shallow, hastily-disguised trap door leading right to it.
Funny thing is, the more I unleash on that Everlast, the more familiar I get with all that formerly-buried shit, the happier and freer I become. I know this sounds like kindergarten "Duh!" type shit, but seriously, in twenty years I have tried just about everything you could think of. Anything that any number of counselors, articles in psych journals, self-help books, and doctors could think of. I thought I was going to have to either die with this shit festering, or live long enough to end up on the 6 o'clock news up in a bell tower with a sniper rifle.
Somewhere back there, I turned a corner. Somewhere back there, I finally learned how to say "fuck that shit" and stick to it. I've even stood up to my dad and very clearly said, "This is my boundary, and you may not cross it. Stop it." And I didn't retreat; he did. That was a transformative moment for me, lemme tell you. Since then, I haven't quivered even once in any sort of confrontation where before I would vibrate worse than those massage chairs they slam you in when you go get a deluxe pedicure.
Somewhere back there, I literally stopped caring about what they think, what they say, how I might come across. I stopped letting my obligations rule me. Hell, I stopped looking at them as obligations because the only fucking obligation I have is to Little Owl. My light, my life, my joy, my preschooler-going-on-teenager.
I used to love upheavals. They were my heaven crashing to the ground, burning the old to fertilize new growth. Somewhere, I stagnated. Somewhere, I gave away my power (again) and tried to be a good little homemaker and fit myself into the person I thought I wanted to be. The person I thought would make my inner child happy. The person I thought would recreate my home as a child with all of the Cleaver Family wonderfulness we used to have, without all the Married-With-Children and Three-Faces-of-Eve crap that went along with it.
Turns out that isn't who I am at all, no matter how good my brownies and sewing skills are. I realized my only responsibility is to be the best example for my daughter, to teach her what being a true, strong, courageous woman really is all about. And in order to do that, my highest duty, then, was to be absolutely true to myself and unafraid to own it. In fact, I'm now afraid to do any less, for fear of teaching her to limit herself.
When it was just me, I could be as weak-spined and full of shit as I wanted. But now those large, hazel eyes of Little Owl are looking up at me, and I can't afford to be anything less than the badass motherfucker I really am.
Holy shit. I'm rather awesome.
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