Testing the Limits of Authenticity

It has always been strangely easy to write about myself. It’s how I work through the shit my brain throws at me, so it wasn’t a big jump to start writing for a larger(ish) audience. The last few years have taught me a lot about connecting with readers and the avoidance of naval gazing.

Recently, though, I’ve run into a snag. I am unsure how to authentically write about my life and feelings in the context of separation and divorce. For one, it’s not just my story to tell. Airing my own mental dirty laundry is something I feel entitled to, but the complicated nuances of interpersonal relationships are not something over which I can claim ownership. There is also the fact that my kids could someday read this, and while I’ve said lots of things I might not love for them to read, the details of their parents’ relationship feel completely off limits to me.

The only solution I’ve come to is to write the emotional truth of where I am, and not the details of what led me here.

I live here so I’m home now

This is the first time I’ve ever lived alone, and while a lot of it is what I expected, there have been a lot of surprising feelings. You’d think by now I would have learned that feelings are complicated.

I was not expecting to be lonely. I was not expecting to feel grief.

Maybe I can save someone else some pain. Even if you are absolutely sure that a decision is the right one, it does not preclude other difficult feelings along the way.

I’m having trouble letting myself feel settled in this house that I love because I know it is only mine for another ten months.

The rent is too damn high

The only reason I can afford this place for a year is because of my father’s death.  I can hear him in the back of my mind, telling me that forcing myself to suffer won’t bring him back, so I might as well make this life transition slowly. I know he would want me to use this money to soften the blows of the last year.

Yet, I can’t help but let the uncertainty of the future intrude upon any semblance of happiness today. I see why this is useless, but I feel powerless to stop it.

Uncertainty is not something I tolerate well. OCD brain thrives on it, and cripples me in the process. My life has never felt less certain, less stable, than it does right now. Uncertainty terrifies me, and I will always jump to the negative possibilities first. I’m going to focus on the worry.

In some ways, this preoccupation with worst-case scenarios is exactly what keeps them from coming true. I don’t (just) mean that in an OCD sort of way, either. I mean it literally. Anxiety is what drives me to come up with plans and back up plans.

When that fails me, I wallow in the pit of hopelessness. It’s sort of a new swimming hole for me and I definitely don’t think I want to visit it again. My brain feels short-circuited by the last few years.

So bear with me while I try to find my footing again. There’s no map for this stage of my life and I am having to navigate unknown obstacles at every turn.

I’m going to try to update once a week whether I feel like it or not. So there may be some new growing pains for this blog, which come to think of it, seems to fit my life right about now.

And because all blog posts should include pictures — here is Rowan making an expression that captures everything.