Spiraling

This week, I’ve been in Dallas dealing with some family stuff and then housesitting for a friend. I lived in DFW for most of my life, and coming back is always familiar and usually pretty easy. But this trip has been different. Triggering a way it’s never been before.

I know the reasons for some of this discomfort. I’ve done so much healing over the last three years, and returning to the place where so much of the wounds I needed to heal were created is hard. For example, I went to the house I lived in with my ex-husband. Four years ago, I found that house and decorated it, thinking it would be my home for a long time. It was my dream home. Now it feels like a stranger’s house even though I bought the welcome mat and the wind chimes. My ex still lives there with his new wife. It’s not mine anymore. There’s grief in there, but there’s also a realization that I don’t fit there anymore. I’m a different person now.

Growth and healing are funny things. Not funny ha ha. Funny uncomfortable and weird. It’s not a linear process. It’s more like a spiral where you keep coming around to the same themes, albeit new angles or deeper layers of the issues. Each time you think you’re past it, it’ll trip you up all over again.

Photo by Reid Zura on Unsplash

As a writer, I am both a participant and an observer of this process. Everything is fodder for my writing so I’m always coming at my own thoughts and actions with curiosity. I wonder how my specific experiences give insight into more universal human experience. How I can explore those things in my writing. What metaphors can I use? Thinking of the perfect word to describe a specific emotion. At the same time, I’m also just a woman who’s dealing with pain and doubts and the discomfort of outgrowing old versions of myself. A lady who’s trying to build a new dream. The participant is the messy bit. The observer is more objective but not completely so. It’s complex.