To Conquer

The tightness in my legs, from my hips down to my ankles, feels good, unfamiliar, and awakens a new awareness in my body. 

My tendency is to move and now, with my increased strength and energy, I am moving more. It is in fact hard to slow down. 

But I slow. I slow when my heart breaks a little, or when my expectations, high and unrealistic, are not met. I slow when my new body starts sending me new messages, and because I have always listened, I must listen now.

I have left so much behind this year. I have given up so much that I thought I wanted. Now, I am following hope. I am following inspiration. I am following a dream that I can feel but can't yet see.

I try to remember who I am because it is what soothes me most; knowing myself. I learned that through years of turbulence, struggle, depression, that to know myself, and to accept her, is to be home. I have become so comfortable with a dynamic environment that now, that I am creating some stability, it is freaking me out just a little bit. 

Part of me has always believed that the less I have, the less I have to lose, so building a life, building a great future seems like a huge risk. I have to come to terms with the fact that losing love in my life is part of the engagement I crave. I have so loved the new things I have learned, the new parts of the world that have opened up to me. These things, this new knowledge will not be lost because it lives in my heart. But I have come up against my fear of building a success I value, and I admit to being petrified into stasis. 

I will eventually break free and keep moving, but like the dream I work toward that I cannot quite see, this fear of loss is the constant I feel creeping up on me and can't outrun. It is inevitable. I struggle to conquer it, the pain of it so familiar that I know it like a second skin.

But this is part of me. This is what holds me back. I lost my heart once, when I was young, maybe too young to understand that I could, maybe too young to understand how to handle it, and I was left in the dark. The world deadened to a cold black and white and I could not feel out the point. I could not discern a reason to engage in a world that could take your heart so swiftly, soundlessly, carelessly. 

I have slowly come back, and to all the world, I am fully engaged. But still, I hold myself back. I keep myself busy with less important work so that the work I must do can go undone. The work that could provide a deep love, an astounding success, a resonant triumph.

I hold myself back because the loss still echoes in my hollow bones and chills me with a warning; do not accumulate that which you could love. Do not accomplish that which could be taken. Do not dare to attain a life that could shatter and leave you flattened.

I struggle to silence this fear, or at the very least, live with it. 

At the very least, I will live with it.

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TMI? I am not sure. This new way of writing sure does churn the butter. I am two weeks away from closing down my GoFundMe for my tiny house build, so if you wanted to help out with a small donation, it would be super cool if you could do that in the next two weeks. I am finished digging out the small piece of land I need to build on. Now I will start! Well, actually, I am starting next weekend. It is very exciting. I will probably post pictures here.