The Shift

I miss my dad so much today I can hardly breath. The weight of it resting on my chest and my eyes burn with tears that I keep holding back. I miss my little friend Jennifer, working away in Idaho, I feel very alone without her, lunch and afternoon walks have not been the same without her. I miss my husband today, just being near him makes me calm and at peace. I miss my boys today, the love they give, the cute faces, the insatiable need to learn and be loved.

I miss them, I sit here and feel very alone, and wonder why we are all split from one another. I know the answers, but I hate those answers, I sit here and think of better ways in my mind for it all to be the way it should be. No answer is good enough, no solution works, just the reality of what needs to be done.

No need to feel sadness, but it’s there. Welling up inside, taking all I have to hold it back, to keep it from overflowing into streams of tears. I guess I’m a tiny bit soul sick today, and not matter how many chips I put in my mouth, I don’t feel any better. I just feel sicker.

Oddly enough, I had a moment yesterday where I looked in the mirror and saw someone else. I saw someone I wasn’t used to seeing. Looked a lot like me, but wasn’t really me, was it? Standing at attention for my karate training with Sensei Paul, he makes me look at myself in the mirrors on the wall. I hate it, but yesterday, I saw myself. I saw me, I saw that girl that has been hiding behind the fat girl for a long time. I couldn’t even do what he was asking me to do, I just was looking at someone else in the mirror, this girl who looked like me, but better.

For so long, I have gotten used to not really looking at myself in a mirror, I got used to the shame. I got used to avoiding eye contact with others, in hopes that if they did see in my eyes, they didn’t see my shame, and didn’t see how I wasn’t good enough. I have noticed the fidgeting with my clothes is not as often as if used to be, and I am beginning to have pride in myself; things that have been very foreign to me for a very long time. Sensei Paul makes me look at him when I punch and kick, and its been so hard for me, but I do it, it has begun to help me build my broken self-esteem. I am grateful to him for that.

I am feeling the shift in my life, the shift from just existing, to wanting to live life. The need to follow my dreams races thru my veins, the need to be with those I love, the need to take care of me, the need to be me, all just raging thru me. I am tired of just existing and accepting, it’s so hard. I am emotionally drained from it all, and if I could just lie down and sleep for days and days, I think I could wake up and begin again as a new me. But I can’t, I have to keep pressing ahead, lack of sleep, all the rolls I play, all I do, everything continuing to move on, and let the molting process complete itself, so one day, when I look in the mirror again, I am that girl that I am supposed to be all the time.

I’m tired today, tired from it all, and I am just glad that I can keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep going. There will be a finish line to cross someday, I just have to keep moving toward it.