Starting Over
Starting Over. You’re not starting over love. You are continuing….we are always just continuing. Starting over isn’t a thing. Starting over is an illusion. You are continuing on as you always do, but with more wisdom and a deeper access to it than you did prior to the ending. Prior to them leaving. Prior to your life imploding.
We strive and build and pretend because striving, building and pretending is what we’re fed from birth. And then when we finally get good enough at striving and building and pretending, a season we can’t prepare for descends upon us like an extended hug from our creepiest uncle.
We dress ourselves up pretty for a couple of decades until we feel heavy and cluttered and fraudulent. Until we feel the debilitating anxiety of being entirely obligated to lives other people wanted. This is our midlife freak-out. Our perfectly unhinged era. The one I’m still in. The one I love the most. The one where we keep stripping down to anything that feels honest, suddenly allergic to people and ideas and systems that were once sold to us as the only safe offer. We wake up daily wrapped in gratitude and ‘what in the actual fucks?’ I’m not sure this part ever ends.
There we are. Thawing from the inside out. Everything feels either sharp or achy and our life crumbles all around us down to a billion uncontrollable and unrecognizable fragments that somehow end up being truer than all the ones before. Funny / not funny how that goes. And that ancient whisper that’s been haunting us for as long as we’ve had memories, echoes her way through time…straight to our bedroom floor. We hear her now. We hear her…
Maybe we repeat this forever. And not because we don’t know ourselves, but because we finally do. Because we keep knowing ourselves. We keep trying on life to see what fits and when it doesn’t, we throw it out. When it isn’t bright enough, we blow it out.
You are not starting over. You are just deciding on your next adventure. I’m learning that there’s always a depressing space between adventures. Between not this and this. Between yes him and haha byyyeeeebitch. Between what gets put to rest and what gets to ride until we die. This is a very powerful place to be. It means you’re deciding. So wipe those eyes. You’ve earned this clarity.
Recenter. Release the nonsense. Purge what doesn’t spark. Maximize the space you take up then expand it even more. It’s time to be visible again.
You are not starting over. You’re gathering new preferences. New standards. Some new kinds of courage. Really you’re just living as a person on the earth. This is what life is.
It’s trying and loving and losing. It’s gathering yourself back up and cocooning and healing, swearing you’ll never open up again and then opening up again. It’s every single one of these ridiculous all grey area gems flowing in and out of us forever. And no, you won’t always like it. Truthfully, you’ll mostly hate it while it’s happening…but then the sun…she freaking shines again.
So please please please don’t stay somewhere you don’t want to be just because you’re scared of ‘starting over.’ Everything builds on everything. Everything is progress. Everything is forward movement. Everything you think is total destruction is just you gathering more truth, shedding more bullshit and continuing on. Nothing can be erased, it can only change form. And what you keep calling starting over is just life making room again. For you. For you. For you.
Life isn’t asking you to start over. She is asking you to allow your form to change so you can continue true. She is asking you to trust this holy rhythm because it is the only one that will sustain you.
You are never starting over…we are simply and profoundly continuing…
julie harper I AM HER