{ the girl might live || bjork }

sooo, it's been a long year.

i know i'm not the only one who has struggled this year. things have been happening in my world, the worlds of my friends, and the world at large. heartbreaking, difficult things. and those events and changes --- the kind that leave you breathless, wondering what just reached into your chest and replaced your heart with black ice --- they leave a hole. they leave a cavern.

it's been frustrating to feel like i can't run around in my own soul without hitting deadly patches of this black ice and wiping out. sometimes i can't stand back up for days. and other times i can't stop staring at the moments frozen in the walls, happy moments that held no suspicion or foresight of things to come. what a tragic museum.

somehow i think the ice will melt --- this cold, this hollowness, is only a season, and one that makes sense according to what i've been through. but my happiness is somehow inaccessible to me at times, that happiness i had, the acceptance i felt, and the love i knew. it's stuck and locked away behind 71 layers of protective ice. and there's a gash in my memory of those things because now i want to know when things changed, when everything became a lie, when i should have known . . .

i feel like my words are clumsy and not coming out how i want them to, but the bottom line is that i think this year for me has to be about reclaiming. i must reclaim myself, my experiences, and my worth. i must reclaim the time it's taken for me to stand up again. i reclaim the truth that i am a woman created for a purpose, set aside for something magnificent, and that everything i go through is bringing me toward that magnificence. i'm going to take a hatchet to the walls of ice in my heart and release my frozen memory to new air. i must fight for what i want and what i love. i must fight for myself.

it strikes me now that the time i've spent laid out in pieces on the floor of my soul have not been a waste. being forced to lie down and be still, even on a floor of tears, has changed who i am and what i see. standing up, i usually only look to what is ahead and what is behind. lying down, i am reminded of what is above me, a white billowing banner of hope and grace . . .

this breath is new, this perspective is young, which is why my thoughts are jumbled and my sentences choppy. but if all the pain i've felt this year is because something is being born and made new, i think i can begin to understand and accept it. i think i can breathe.

so my reclaiming and new breathing begins with this:
this season's limited edition bottle of Happy in Bloom.
happy early birthday, self.

whatever this season may hold . . .
pain, remembering, grace . . .
ice melting into another sea of tears . . .
i can bear it.
with you by my side
i can bear it.



---she