I’ve been trying to write for a while. Weeks really. I’ve been a little afraid at what might come out if I allow myself to sit in front of a screen and just let words come out.

In all honesty I think I’ve spent the summer drawing lines in the sand that I don’t believe anyone else really knows about.

(I say this though and all I can think of is my best friend reading this on her couch and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that she’s seen the lines I’ve chosen to draw.)

I’m trying to look at my life differently than I ever have.

I’m trying to see the things, people, and moments that give me life.

I think I’ve been avoiding people the last few weeks. I’ve been cleaning out corners and sitting with my empty house and empty brain and I’ve been sad and not sad and a lot of things in between those. 

I’ve spent a lot of years being drained because I thought I was supposed to be.

I’ve spent a lot of years doing things I think I should because other people needed my abilities to step into those places.

I stayed longer than I should have because if not me than who.

I stayed in friendships, I stayed feeling bad because I wasn’t better, I stayed so others weren’t alone even though the places I stayed were taking every ounce of energy I had because I had the ability to keep moving forward. 

I stayed because I had strength on the behalf of the people who didn’t have it.

But, when I haven’t been able to write this week, when it’s been a lot and a lot, I chose to lean into something that is constantly a reference point, constantly something I choose to look at when I feel like I can’t untangle what I’m feeling.

Obviously, the movie “The Labyrinth.”

On my rewatch I noticed something.

All the main character had to do was change how she saw things. All she had to do was look at a wall differently and there was a door. All she had to do was look past the cracks in the mirror and remember she was still on a quest.

All she had to do was change the way she saw things.

All she had to do was choose her own way of seeing things.

There was a chunk of my life wherein I chose to make myself smaller so a person who was close to me didn’t feel small.

I chose to stay tucked away so a person in my peripheral didn’t feel left out.

So instead, I left my own self out.

And honestly, I got angry. I got sad. I got lonely.

I got unlike myself.

I felt like I was drawing lines in the sand because the human in my life was unable to step out of theirs.

And that haunted me for a long while.

So, this summer when I felt stepped on and shoved aside and a few other adjectives I won’t share; I decided to draw some lines in the sand.

And it’s been hard.

It’s been lonely. 

It’s been giving space to those who didn’t need to draw those lines.

It’s been keeping myself out of places I didn’t have the emotional ability to process.

It’s been truthfully coming to terms with being alone and being someone, who’s mom died.

And those realizations have been earth shattering in ways I’ve kept quieter because I’ve been unable to articulate what those actual mean.

And it’s been a lot of sitting with my own brain and classical music.

Guess what?

That’s ok.

It sounds sad, lonely, and depressing.

But, really, it’s not.

Today I spent an hour with three good friends of mine, and then met my bestie for early dinner and I got the light of things that brought me life.

And that led me to these words.

Words that felt shadowed and heavy and so many other things.

But they weren’t

They were just things I needed to look at again.

I needed to change the way I saw them.

This summer won’t go down as one that brought me goodness and memories.

It will be one where I came home to myself in a quiet way, so that I could let things die, so that I could let pieces I kept go, because they made others more comfortable.

This summer is leading me to fall and while that’s a place I usually don’t want to go- this year; I’m ready to lead myself into fall.