Whatever you do, don't look back...

When you look back... what do you see?

More and more images flood our conscious and sub-conscious with this newfound ideology...radical acceptance...the new words we learn, the shortened way we speak. The abbreviated way we interact - for some this is all they have ever known. How are we left to think if we are left to be trained out of it?

Day-by-day, I feel like my brain is "shorting," at times. My reading isn't as thorough, I've all but forgotten how to spell...my vocabulary dissipating into faint spells of inquiry. I am not even sure what I am saying...there's always a lag. An ever-present thought bubble, always ruminating...

Where are we now? A new year. Aside from social media becoming the dictator of everything I hadn't even voiced out loud. The gaggle of influencers I enjoy to visit with, clutter my feed and make me briefly laugh for a few moments. In those moments, I don't feel so alone. We are all so connected, but never so far apart.

The echoes of my laughter are joyous - though fleeting. Sometimes I think about the time where even a giggle was unknown. It is not that I want to be reminded of darkness - I want to be cognizant that I am not there any longer (so I can identify how to better approach it in the future).

There are parts to this life that can be so overwhelming - I am told that this is okay. I am told that this is normal. Apparently, there are so many people on social media that share my same quirks. Again, this acceptance that there have been other people having the same anxieties all this time is comforting.

For some reason, though, as much as I am finding so many versions and parts of me that are "normal," it has also desensitized me. I almost feel like I am not unique. I feel like my brain has somehow been erased. I had been feeling a bit lost in general these past few years, realizing a lot about myself as a person. Changing, in such beneficial ways - though not quite reflecting it self in my confidence. How is it that changing the things I had always wanted to improve on only led to MORE questions. Not answers, more questions. More confusion. More, more, more. All I really want is less.

I started not to care about my appearance in public - not that I was overly concerned; however, there was a way I would present myself (i.e.: always wearing jewelry or a small amount of makeup). I chalked it up to just not caring what I looked like, I am who I am - I'm comfortable, everyone is paying attention to themselves - not me. I do not think I realized what that was actually doing to my self-confidence. I started to neglect a lot of things, just then starting to feel like I just didn't deserve to care.

While my heart still feels somewhat empty at times, I think it's starting to soften. I do not know if my callousness to everything and everyone started to let up due to a lessening of family conflict or not - what I am grateful for is the future. We are not promised anything, I think I would rather spend it looking forward to improvement on the relationship I have with myself, which is of the utmost importance. Tending to the part of the garden that deserves the attention, letting the weeds wilt on their own.

Being and doing things alone is all I have ever known. Even if there were people around, I never felt safe. For some reason, when I look back on my younger years - I feel like I was so much stronger. I left a lot on the table when the people around me started to become the poison ivy that crept all around me...and began to suffocate my very soul. I started to feel it all crashing down on me - I knew that it was so wrong. This was never my battle to fight, and that I deserved more. My anxieties stem from conditioning from trauma - my annoyance, resentment and realization that I had no coping skills. All I knew was an immediate reaction to the degradation - knowing, all the while, I didn't deserve it. Really, my responses didn't matter to it all didn't really matter, and coming to the realization that no one will be coming to save you. Really, it's just not happening. The odd thing, I suppose, is why I even thought that - when I came from such an unsupportive place...it's the longing I still haven't quite grieved over. I know, consciously; however, just rubbing salt in the wound by not accepting reality. Strange, what your ego does to you.

Relationships, of course I always felt alone - whether it had been misunderstood or misconstrued. It was the only power of my sexuality that held court. Therein laid all of my prowess, and the only vulnerability that was acceptable to them. Me, my real soul - they wanted none of that.

I do not know, maybe alone is all I will ever be? I feel invisible sometimes, not considered - not in a negative or sad way... I do not know. I feel like maybe disappearing for a little while might be warranted, to find out what I really, really, want from life? Do I really have that luxury and entitlement? Who cares? Why does there have to be a reason for everything? Maybe it's okay to coast sometimes, we're not all rock stars - even they can't handle it...