An Unexceptional Blog

It had been a year, dear reader, since I had written anything at all, when one non-eventful evening, I found myself opening my laptop, wondering if I was ready to write again. I was thinking of writing about the concept of change, having recently felt like I had been violently thrown in all directions by its currents. When I used to write more regularly, I always had a few ideas on the go, with each given a folder containing anything from a few hundred words to a single title. As I looked through my notes,  scanning what my past self had started, I found myself reading, to my own surprise, the beginnings of a post on the topic of change. It was titled “Let It Change You.” Allow me to quote myself:

“There is something unmistakably magical about letting things affect us. How perfectly human is it that things around you change you? How wonderful is it that you grow from your experiences? People seem to think that in order to know themselves, find themselves, they need to isolate themselves. Like refining ore into an ingot, they think they will understand themselves better when they find the purest form of themselves: and to do this, they must be isolated from all others. Impurities in metal are influences in the mind. But I would argue, dear reader, that your truest self isn’t entirely inside you; it is all around you. Wherever you go, letting things change you doesn’t need to be a big deal: you are just collecting and accepting the parts of you that weren’t with you, yet.”

I blinked in disbelief. “I wrote this?” I asked myself. I couldn’t quite believe it. Clearly, my past self didn’t know what she was talking about; she didn’t know the staggering amount of change she would soon have to manage and overcome. My past self obviously couldn’t imagine the twelve months of crushing, stifling, overwhelming change that she would have to survive.

I frustratingly closed my laptop for a few more weeks.

In the past year, dear reader, things have changed quickly and sharply. Our little family moved across provincial lines, again, but for the last time. We moved much closer to family, geographically, which has had some unexpected repercussions, emotionally. My husband left a career he had had for 10 years and made a drastic shift in a new but exciting direction. As a result, he went back to University, full time, and I found myself living a life similar to that of a single parent. Our daughters changed schools again. We became first time home owners and navigated all the surprises that came with that. When we had barely moved in I returned to the workforce, full time, on location, for the first time since having the kids — an eight year hiatus.

As a result, during all this, I was quiet. As I navigated this change, I rationed my energy and focused on very few things in my life: my husband, my children, and making a sanctuary of our new home. A lot of people heard less of me, I wrote nothing at all, I painted nothing, I sewed very little, and I stayed away from all social events. I had no energy for making myself pleasing and amenable and interesting to others. All my masking tendencies and coping mechanisms were shut off in order to preserve what energy I had for what needed it most. I found out some people don’t like this raw, un-edited version of me.

Indeed, this past year of change has very much been a year of “surviving.” I was prepared to write about the anger and helplessness I had felt under the weight of all this upheaval. 

Yet, since opening my laptop a few weeks ago, the perspective my past self had taken on change quietly made its home in my mind, and I felt myself beginning to look back at my experience with a little less heartache.

I had survived all this change, yes, but was I also, as my past self suggested, collecting parts of myself that simply hadn’t been with me yet?

Indeed, a few things come to mind, dear reader.

This past year I collected authenticity. I let down my barriers and re-learned how to be myself. As I was forced to shed layers of mimicry and masks to manage my energy and capacity during these multiple overhauls, it gave me an excuse — or was it an opportunity? — to see what was left, when all artifice was gone, and get reacquainted with the person that I am under the surface.  I started walking through this world as myself, with a new kind of confidence that doesn’t comes from “Man, I aced that casual conversation,” and more from “wow, I was totally myself” with a pleasantly surprised grin.

I collected self-advocacy. I learned to listen to myself more intentionally, and, I learned methods to demand the space I need to check-in, inwards, and make myself be heard. When something doesn’t feel right to me, I’m not always given the few moments I need to listen to that initial feeling, that instinct. But, it quickly became clear that the only way to survive the change around me was to actively shape it; and, I couldn’t do that if I stayed silent. I had to — or got to? — demand a pause and have the confidence to say, out loud, “Hold on: I have feelings about this, give me a second,” before closing my eyes to claim some space to hear myself, and then be able to voice my thoughts. 

And finally, I collected perspective. While lost in the chaos of compounding change, I was forced — or was I given a unique chance?— to rethink some of my priorities and how much energy I attribute to them. I took an honest look at the roster of things on my plate and realized, without judgement, that I was committing my energy in too many places. And so, I let go of some aspects of my life I might have been shouldering more out of habit than necessity. I shed the weight of some expectations I had set probably decades ago (“you must always have a pristine house: what if someone comes in a sees the grime on the faucet in the kitchen?”), and I cast off some energy-draining people-pleasing tendencies (“This new acquaintance doesn’t seem to like me: I’ll need to find out more about what they like so I can emulate it”).  

Yes, I survived this year of change, and it was indeed one of the toughest periods of adjustment I’ve ever lived. But, dear reader, I like the person I’ve become because of it, in the end.

It just feels like I have more of myself in me than I did before.

It seems past me was onto something after all.