Emotion and pain flew out of me. One moment I was numb and the next I felt a deep pain in my chest and I groaned. I wept. I could have thrown up. And then as quickly as it came, it left. Is this true grief?

You know how we like to say that we’re being irrational, or we’re overreacting when we feel the moment at hand shouldn’t have caused the emotional response in us that it did? We wonder what’s wrong with us, we feel shame, and embarrassment, we ignore it and move on, or we claim it as an identity of being unbalanced and unstable.

She didn’t know what drove her to turn right instead of left down Clover Street that night. Maybe it was a lack of awareness after a long day, maybe it was what he came to call it later on, fate.

Loneliness in any way, in any capacity, is terrible. But I want to talk to the one who is intimate with it. I want to talk to the one who knows how loud the silence can be. The one who knows what it's like to be covered in the sticky sweat of the night with only the voice in your head to keep you company. I want to talk to you.

It’s hard when your pain doesn’t have a name. When it’s not heartbreak, when it’s not sorrow, when it’s not anger, or fear, or hopelessness. When it’s all of those things but not exactly…

It is never as dark as your eyes make it seem. I realized it feels so dark because it’s been so light, and what happens with your eyes if they don’t have any time to adjust? If the light suddenly becomes pitch black or if it’s pitch black and you turn the light on, it’s always jarring. It’s always darker than it really is right away, or brighter than it really is right away before it balances out and your eyes adjust.

I’ve been plagued by imagining worst-case scenarios in the past. I’m very good at it, as my years of survival mode has demanded it of me. It was a strength that kept me protected in many ways. But once I really tried to be present in my life, it felt like a weakness.

I think this has been said in so many different ways: “You cannot love someone before you love yourself.” “You can’t give what you don’t already have.” Even the golden rule, “Treat others the way you wish to be treated.”

It’s a scapegoat. It’s what keeps us from trying. It’s where we hide our abilities and courage, so we don’t have to know failure itself. We feed it our dreams and hopes and pray it’s enough to fill Its belly for a lifetime. But It’s not enough, is it?

Why I’ve been away for a while… It felt as if it happened in one moment, like I woke up one day and things were just different, I was just different. We all know that nothing happens overnight, you don’t wake up and suddenly have the life that you’ve dreamt of, that person you’ve longed for, that perfect body, etc. But there are moments, where all the hard work starts to show and things start falling into place, and suddenly but not so suddenly, It’s all different.

You know how you can find the evidence for what you want to believe if you look hard enough. If you ask enough people, someone will tell you what you want to hear. If you find enough fears they’ll keep you from the destined heartbreak you see in your head. There’s always a reason to believe what you are trying to believe.

I’m having a tough time writing this. I struggle to write anything that I feel I can stand next to and be proud of when I’m numb and dissociating, and this week I’ve been dissociating a lot. I’ve had a hard time feeling what I need to feel and showing up for myself emotionally. 

I have thought so many different things about how my life would look or what it would turn out to be. Most of them tragedies and lots and lots of pain. Although I wasn’t wrong about the pain, I was wrong about the lack of beauty I would find. Take a breath, young Sarah, you’ll be alright.

I never wanted to be a mother, my whole life it wasn’t even a thought in my head. I’d hear other women talk about having kids and everything they dreamed of in that area, and I couldn’t ever picture myself in that place. I wasn’t just terrified of it, I felt nothing. That place in me that might naturally long for it, was just empty. And then I turned 30…

When you lose someone, in my experience, it is not just the loss of them in your life, but it is now the hoarding of the love you have for them just sitting inside of you with nowhere to go that is excruciating. To my best understanding, and my personal experience, that’s what grief is. The un-experienced love for another that is living inside you.

It’s still a challenge, not to write, but to share. I spend hours everyday writing, and I will still forget that a part of it is meant to be shared with the world. When I sit in my chair, I write for myself and tuck it away on my bookshelf. I feel a sense of accomplishment, success, and fullness; I feel like a part of myself has been lived and enjoyed. But as soon as it is shared with the world (any amount of people outside of myself) all of a sudden the measurements of success, accomplishment, and fullness change. The demands for them become greater and I feel like an imposter.

The last 6 years.

Coming from someone who has been and can be a royal ass hole, kindness is better. I’ve given two different versions of myself to the world: the sensitive, emotional, understanding one, and then the hard-shelled, walled-up, tough exterior one. And it all depends on how threatened I feel that day, in that moment, or with that person.

As a writer and storyteller, I can guide the reader through the story the way I want. I can guide you through my story, my life, the way I want. I think this is part of why I dove into writing, it gives me a sense of control and ownership over my story. I get to tell it the way I want. I get to tell it in my truth. In telling my story I lean heavily into the narrative of how wounded I’ve been and how much healing I’ve gotten. And that’s true, it’s a valid part of my story, but in sharing my truth there are pieces that I hide…

I think about ten years ago and how that feels like an entirely different life. I think about my childhood and THAT feels like an entirely different universe. I think about two years ago and that Sarah feels, WAS, a completely different person. And of course, we go through life and we change and grow, and evolve in whatever ways necessary, but with these different “lives” there’s a shedding, almost A dying of that person who lived that life. That old version of you being put to rest.