Thursday, May 15, 2014

I've Changed.


It just occurred to me that, "I've changed" sounds like something someone says who needs forgiveness.  I'm feeling on the other radical side of the scale, someone that is not looking for forgiveness for being themselves more and more each day.

First clue I've changed:  Four years ago, I wouldn't have written something quite this revealing, choosing instead to find the sweet spot story, something that would make us all feel good at the end of it.  But those don't seem as realistic for a daily column.

I have changed.
I am nowhere near the person I was just two December 14th's ago.
Two December's ago, I hadn't a clue your best friend could die suddenly.
And I had no freaking insight to the fact that, while trying to walk in the reality of her death,
another one of your closest, oldest friends could go and do the same thing.

I feel like I've been walking a tightrope ever since.

I've changed.
I'm the most introverted extrovert I know.  And that's the first time I've come up with that totally true descriptive.  I can finally admit I don't just like time alone, I crave it like some crave caffeine or chocolate.  It feels parallel to taking a deep breath and exhaling outloud.  I guess because that's what I'm trying to do when I'm alone:  Take the deep breaths.  Cry the deep cries.  Go to the deep places I otherwise am holding at bay when I am out, when I am on, when I am working, or when I am socializing.

One thing that hasn't changed:   knowing that making time for reading good books helps.
Years ago, I was introduced to Anne Lamott by my sister with the novel, Bird by Bird.  I became obsessive about everything Lamott wrote.  Her novels and non-fiction writing grasped me by the heart, took my breath away and made me feel like somebody got me, right where I needed to be 'gotten'.  Then I read Elizabeth Gilbert's books and felt a similar twang in my gut when relating to many of the feelings written out beautifully, perfectly.  Since Suzanne and Shauna left, I dove into Joan Didion, who pretty much felt like my therapist for awhile there, and I'm now deep in a Cheryl Strayed feast of words that have me feeling sopped.  How another person could write, like a poet, for the shittiest of feelings, strange and common.

And so, tonight, while reading said good books, beautiful words, stories I relate to,  I realized, I've changed.  I've been stuck on truly committing to this thing that I love, {writing here}, in this space, fearing the futility of writing, the mere unimportance of all of it since Suzanne and Shauna died.  All topics felt too tiny.

So, I've had to change. 
I'm different. 
Different than I ever expected I could be and deciding to let that be the face of me.  This new person, raw with reality.  How I relate now.  That will just have to be the way I write.  Whatever I write about.
I'm taking life at face value.  Knowing that not knowing what comes next isn't a tiny topic.

 

2 comments:

Sally Tharpe Rowles said...

Hi Molly, it's so interesting that you talk about your reading after your loss. I read Wild as my friend was dying. I chose it as a means of taking my mind off of everything, thinking it was just a book about her hiking adventure. I did not realize that that one book would help me to embrace the loss I was facing & force me not to look away. It was uncanny how I picked up that book not knowing how profoundly it would affect me.

So glad to see you back here on your blog. When will you be in France?

PeregrineBlue said...

Relishing your writing!