Apparently, I Woke Up

After the whole shit-and-the-fan incident, things started slowly declining back toward normality.

And they continue to decline!

Yay!

Actually, the more I think about it, this entire year has been one giant metamorphosis for me. In so many fucking ways.

If I'm being fair, it probably started before this year. With the realization that my sister was sick, then losing her, then rolling straight from all of that grief into the beginning of this year with a whole pile of my own personal shit to figure out.

For a while, I felt like I had shattered.

I was depressed. I sat on the couch for months. I existed, but I don't know how much I was actually living.

And then, somewhere along the way, I woke up.

That's probably the simplest way I can explain it.

I woke up.

Since then, I've been actively working on myself in a way I haven't done in a very long time. I've actually wanted self-betterment again. I've wanted to change things. I've wanted to take care of myself.

And yes, I've quoted Fight Club before, but “self-improvement is masturbation” feels particularly appropriate here because, well... it does feel pretty fucking good.

I'm enjoying it.

Physically, I've gotten healthier over the last several months. I've lost a lot of weight. I'm building my body back up and becoming stronger and healthier than I've been in a long time. That part isn't stopping anytime soon. I still have a long way to go, but for once that doesn't feel discouraging. It feels like something I'm genuinely excited to keep doing.

But the physical stuff is only part of it.

I'm a woman in my 40s now, and I've read a lot about how women go through this enormous transformation during this part of their lives.

Turns out?

Yeah.

They weren't fucking kidding.

There has been a ridiculous amount of self-reflection. I've been digging through inner demons, old trauma, things I've carried around for years, things I thought I understood but apparently did not, and figuring out what the hell actually belongs to me anymore.

And all of it has been for the better.

Sometimes I feel like everything before 40—from year 0.1 through 39—was basically one enormous character-creation sequence.

That's not to say those years were meaningless. Quite the opposite. All of that shit mattered. Every experience, every mistake, every heartbreak, every weird obsession, every person, every terrible decision and every wonderful one built something.

But somewhere around 40, I started actually seeing what all those pieces had been building.

I've started narrowing down who I am.

What I stand for.

What I want.

What I absolutely do not want.

And I'm setting goals that actually feel true to me instead of goals I think I'm supposed to have.

I also read somewhere on the vast and completely trustworthy Internet—she says while laughing—that women often start reconnecting in their 40s with things they loved as teenagers.

Holy fuck.

TRUE.

Music. Art. Clothes. Attitude. Interests. Weird little things that made teenage-me happy and somehow got packed away as adulthood happened.

There were also so many things teenage-me desperately wanted but couldn't have. My family wasn't rich, and if I wanted something extra, I generally had to figure out how to buy it myself.

So a lot of those things stayed dreams sitting on shelves.

Now I'm in my 40s.

I'm still not rich, mind you. Let's not get carried away here.

But I have more ability to reach for the things I want. More importantly, I have the ability to decide what I want my life—and myself—to look like.

Maybe that sounds cliché.

I don't really care.

I'm feeling better about who I am.

I feel more solid.

The ground doesn't feel like it's constantly tipping out from underneath me anymore.

And throughout this entire fucking metamorphosis—through grief and loss and rebuilding and all the weird shit happening inside my head—Travis has been there.

There have absolutely been rough patches. I have not always been the most reasonable human being while trying to figure all of this out.

But he stayed.

He kept me strong when I needed him.

And I did need him.

I still need him.

I'll always need him.

Life is strange that way.

Maybe it's even stranger for me because I believe in reincarnation. I believe souls meet other souls across lives, years, centuries, whatever exists beyond what we understand.

And this one just fits.

It's comfortable.

It's right.

It's perfect—which I say with a grain of salt because nothing is ever truly perfect.

But it's perfect for me.

And that's what matters.

Moving forward, I genuinely think things are going to be better.

I still have a pile of personal goals I'm working toward, and I'm taking steps almost every day to reach them.

Almost.

Sometimes I need a break.

Sometimes I'm lazy.

I'm still a person, for fuck's sake.

Now, if Travis and I could just disappear into the woods somewhere and never have to pay another bill again, that would be fantastic.

Alternatively, someone could dump an obscene amount of money into our laps so we could continue participating in society without worrying about bills.

Either option is acceptable.

We'll see what the rest of the year brings.

I'm hoping autumn is sweet to us.

A really, really sweet autumn.

I desperately want to go camping again. Travis desperately wants to go camping again. So we're going camping again. Somehow. We'll make it work.

And I guess that's where I land after all of these feelings and thoughts and everything that's happened:

It's been a lot.

Some of it fucking sucked.

Some of it hurt more than I knew things could hurt.

And becoming someone you actually like being takes a surprising amount of work.

But I'm happier for it.

So I'll leave this giant pile of feelings with another movie quote because apparently that's what we're doing now.

From Vanilla Sky:

“The sweet is never as sweet without the sour.”

And right now?

The sweet is starting to taste pretty fucking good.