Spring: the Season for New Life

I wish that I could say that my posts have been few and far between due to the wonderful spring weather. I can't. The weather here has been sucky(suckish?). We have run the gamut between sunny spring days and Mother Nature thinking it's still winter. Just this week in the space of a few hours we had one part of the state spot 2+ tornadoes and another part of the state receive over a foot of snow w/blizzard conditions. In MAY! But seriously, I can't blame my lack of posting on enjoying the weather. It's been just me, avoiding writing.

Why? The old battle of being fearful of saying/writing what is on my mind and having it twisted to use against me. Granted I know that the person who initiated this fear does not even know I have a blog, but as this fear has been my companion for 8 years now, it's somewhat hard to kick it out the door completely. And yes, I can tell you to the month and year, as to when this fear first entered my life. I began journaling at some point during my junior high years and continued to do so until May of 2000. Things were not going well in my life at that point. Outwardly things looked fine, inwardly it was a mess. Someone extremely important to me at that time decided to go through my most recent journal and began twisting things I had written and using them to manipulate me. That person REALLY messed with my mind to the point where I believed I had no options left open to me except what that person wanted me to do.

The scenes & conversations that happened in regards to my journals traumatized me to the point that I not only ripped up the pages of every single journal I had saved... I burned them as well. I never wrote again until July of 2005.

That July was 6 months after the passing of my grandmother. Her death seemed to be the kicker to me spiraling down that slippery ladder of despair and hope lost. I went to her grave that July and sat there for the entire afternoon. It was (and is) a small, beautiful, quiet, rural cemetery that is quite literally miles from anywhere. I cried & mourned my grandma. I lay beside her grave in the hot July sun on the crisp green grass and talked to Grandma as if she were there. Eventually I was settled enough to write.

I then went home and hid the notebook. I didn't open it again until this past week and even then, it wasn't intentional. I stumbled across it as I was going through boxes in the basement in preparation for packing for our move this summer. And I sat there amidst the boxes and read what I had written almost 3 years ago.

Isn't it incredible the power that we will allow others to take from us? I realized that I have still been (inadvertently) allowing that person from 8 years ago to control what I do and do not write. As I go throughout my days there is almost always a story or blog post running in my mind. I am maybe odd in the fact that many of the things that run through my mind do so in the format of a book chapter, or newspaper article, or even a blog post. And I can not continue to give power over myself to someone else. By doing so I am allowing myself to continue to be toxic and not breaking the cycle of manipulation. Obviously there's much more to this story but in time, I hope, I will give myself permission to tell my story. Because it is MY story to tell and I am claiming it now to break the circle of control and manipulation. Granted I know this sounds fairly dramatic. In the grand scheme of things it is not but as far as my life goes it is.

On a side note: When I sat down to write this morning this is completely NOT what I had intended to write. My idea was to catch up on life as it has happened over the last couple of weeks. Obviously my subconsciousness needed to say something else. I'm glad it did because there's so much I want to write and have allowed this inner fear to keep it pushed down deep. Spring is the season for rebirth and new life, after all, and this year is the start of a new beginning for us. Spring is the time for me to allow the rebirth of hope and dreams that just might come true.