The last time I wrote was October 7, 2016. Today, it is January 26, 2022. There have been so many times I have come back to my desk, opened up my computer yet no words came to me. Sure, there were times when I could sit down and start a few sentences, and get three paragraphs in and realize, I really have nothing to say- and if I do, no one really wants to hear it. Writers block is an interesting thing. Combined with imposter syndrome, depression, and anxiety -
It's a writers prescription for disaster.
I found small moments of clarity in the last 6 years. A Facebook post that just flowed out of me, or a speech that I found incredibly easy to write. But I missed the empty space. The space that allowed my mind to wander freely, where I wasn't worried about 'drawing' outside the lines, being bold, or vulnerable. I have been living in fear that the new experiences I was having weren't universal enough, or weren't painful enough to share. You can tell from my blog that I have exclusively written what I knew, which often times was pain. I wrote when I was feeling lost, or forgotten, or hurt. Of course those emotions are going to drag out some very heart filled entries.
But what happens when that "Woman on the Edge" I had been writing about all this time, finds herself? What happens when she jumps off the edge and into a world of happiness and love? For me, that meant losing the part of me that dug into the quiet recesses of my soul to bear vulnerability across a blank page. I was thrust into a world that moved so quickly I could barely keep up, much less give my mind time to nest and my soul time to create.
Less than a month after my last post, I met the love of my life. Of course I didn't know he was at the time I met him. But the world suddenly shifted for me. I threw myself into this love. I took my soul out of the dark place I left it after being buried in hurt.
And, I let him heal me. I let him love me.
The burden of a blank page never seemed quite as important to me as living in the moment. Adventuring through life with the man who would come to be my forever love. I had jumped off the edge, and never again would I find myself standing on an edge again, too paralyzed by my past to take the leap.
But, like any great story, mine was not finished writing. Love takes us to incredible places, but the darkness that plagues us is never really gone. It's always waiting under the surface.
You will hear, through my story, that I married the love of my life. As I sit here writing this story, I am happily married to a wonderful man that treats me like I am the best thing in his life. And I feel love in a way I have never felt it before. We have learned to not only love each other unconditionally, but we have learned how to suppress each others demons. Demons that, no matter how much you are in love, how happy you are, how incredibly blessed you feel every single day, still plague the darkest parts of you.
My demon, as it turns out, was anxiety.
A demon that followed me around, likely for my whole life, but that really made itself present to me in the last few years. You'll hear more about how anxiety affected me in later entries, but for now - it's important to know that this anxiety affected everything I did, how I acted, and who I was at my very core. You will hear that my anxiety made me a nervous person, you will hear how it was exasperated by a toxic work environment, political unrest, and ultimately just the everyday terror that living in America brings. However, you will also hear about how my anxiety made me a better communicator, a better listener, and ultimately a better partner.
My demon, an instigator of complex emotions. A rampant disease you have to know how to tame. But that, on days when you can't - overwhelms every piece of you.
I have taken the time to love my demons as much as I love my angels. To live in the basements of my emotions, as much as I breathe in the fresh air at the ceilings of them. I have found a way to live with the constant urge to shut down, and I have decided to be brave. Even if you can't possibly be brave every single day.
So rather than talking about that Woman I once was. Standing on the edge looking out into the world, I look forward to talking about the woman I am now, living in that world. I look forward to describing in every distinct way, how my demons affected me in the last 6 years, and how I overcome them today. I look forward to sharing experiences, and not just thoughts and emotions. I look forward to seeing the ways that vulnerability has changed who I am, how I write, and how I share my life on this platform. But most of all I look forward to filling these pages with the words of a woman, who finally took a leap.
