I’m terrible at keeping a blog. I have no excuses, and finally I no longer feel like I need one. So let this be the last thing I say on the subject.
Moving on: what’s been going on with me? I’m in a 2 personal year, which is boring. If you follow numerology at all, (which you probably don’t because most reasonable people do not, so I will explain in context) then you know that a 2 personal year comes after the excitement and drama and BIG CHANGES of a 1 personal year. In my 1 personal year, I was fired from my job, released two novels that I am really proud of, got a new and better job, and my marriage came to a rather abrupt and unsettling end. Also, just at the tail end of my 1 personal year (they begin and end on your birthday) my best friend and her wife moved into my house with me. So my 1 year was exciting and emotionally exhausting.
A 2 personal year is all about reflection, introspection, and learning. My 2 personal year has been BORING. I’ve tried hard to get amped up about things and ideas, but the universal forces are against my enthusiasm and stubbornness. The universal forces are telling me to chill the fuck out and regroup, reframe, re-establish who and what I am. And even though I’m all about the phoenix cycle, this is some slow-going work these months. There have been no epiphanies–no exciting dawning of understanding–no realizations.
All there has been is a sort of agonizingly slow acceptance of the fact that sometimes I just have to sit still, rest, watch, and listen.
Changes have happened. I have changed a great deal. But these aren’t quantifiable changes–they aren’t the kind of changes I can document or write blog posts about. I spent a week alone on a college campus. I read about wild women and middle aged women and girls who lose their wild ways. I remembered something I can’t articulate about what I am. I gathered bones in the forest, and watched a night blooming sirius come to life, and harvested more tomatoes than I planted, and I did not write a god damn useful word of fiction whatsoever.
I ached at that. I still ache. I mourned parts of me that I didn’t realize had been alive until they died. I’m still grieving for losses that I’m not even conscious of, and losses that linger at the back of my mind, ugly truths that I refuse to face until I can reframe them into something useful–into soil that can be tilled and sowed and tended.
The only thing I can tell you about my 2 personal year so far is that I’ve learned, deeply–acutely–that life changes us. You cannot ever go back, you cannot ever recapture. You can only forge forward, and sometimes that means pausing, resting, and re-examining the very truths you’ve built your life and your identity upon.
And that can be the scariest thing of all.
I hate this year, no matter how much I know I need it. I hate feeling stuck and inactive. I hate hitting a wall every time I build momentum. I hate that I can’t orchestrate my life and force myself to cooperate and take action and get things done. But I love that, right now, I know myself better than I ever have before. I’m communicating with myself better, loving myself more, honoring and being honest with myself in every way. I love knowing that anything is possible from where I’m standing. I love knowing that nothing stays the same. I love knowing that I’m on the right path, because all paths are the right path, just so long as you keep moving forward, even if those steps are singular, slow, and miniscule.
I have a long way to go, still, in my 2 year, and now that I’ve finally–finally–stopped fighting it, I think I’m going to enjoy the next few months a lot better than the first. If I can only learn to be present, to stop imposing my trained beliefs about how I should be living my life on myself…I think I would be a lot happier, for the rest of my life.
