I’ve missed being here and I hope you did too. My months away coming to a close, from one thing to the next, leading me back here.
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A story I do not have for you, a recollection maybe. Timestamps from my time away, scraps of fabric, scattered puzzle pieces, strung together, sewn together, pieced together. A change of jobs where every day I swam through the murky waters of indecisiveness, plucking petals off the flower; “was this the right choice, was this the wrong choice, was this the right choice, was this the wrong choice.” Sitting in the fleeting in-between of what will never be again. New routine, new responsibilities, new, new, new.
Holidays that seem like forever ago; turkey, cold wind, window shopping, birthday, sugar cookies, christmas tree, fireworks, champagne. A blur of time where I felt as if nobody listened to me, a time where we’re told to come together to be with those we love and I had never felt so distant. The animalistic pull I felt to pack my things and leave in a day, to build from the ground up a life where people might think of me in the back of their mind. “Yes, my Christmas was great! It was so nice to see everyone!”
Winter into spring, spring into summer, summer into something far beyond the heat and the glaring sun. Stuck in sweat, stuck inside to think and scroll and think again. Months spent with good people, great dancers, but a large amount of time spent. Pulled around, finding a groove, “maybe I can do this for the rest of my life”. Eyes still here, on my keyboard, in the mirror, on the stage, on myself, but the dull headache forming because my eyes turned towards the future. Stuck in the grip of different natalie’s, be here right now! Be there, think of your future self! And yet I found myself most comfortable when I was so deep into something, the tunnel vision of concentration almost a meditation to my ever-racing mind. The rhythm of being. Back and forth I found myself, I wonder still if I was present enough; am I being present now?
Because of this all, I took some time away from writing and from this digital space, not necessarily by choice but by natural need. I can go on about how I needed space for perspective, how I grew as a person from this distance and how I’m back to tell my story of newly acquired wisdom, but that simply is not true. It feels so hard to leave and pick up again; a puzzle left half finished, a book half read on the shelf, a cup of coffee gone cold by the afternoon. In a sense, things still lie there, half complete swelling with the possibility of completion again. I read some of my older posts, the girl I was, the girl I still carry with me. Such an interesting passage of time it seemed.
More of a creature comfort, I came crawling back to my keyboard, to ambiguous ideas laced with typos in my notes app, to scribbled ideas in mismatch ink on a crumpled sticky note. My body not only craved an ounce of stability during this time away, but a place to make amends with it, to you all, a space for people who experience the same ins and outs of a life that goes on day by day. Because of course, the human experience is that of community and here we can be connected.
And so today I write to you, the person who is still here laying and reading, scrolling and reading, moving and reading. To have eyes on my words is the most important thing and I am grateful to begin this place again. Capturing the moments that make life real, that makes us think and overthink, and write and rewrite, and text and double text. This space is for us once more. My time away was spent in the thick of experience itself, one I wish I captured on a word document for the cursor to relive over and over, but we cannot interfere with the things that have been done. But all time is time worth spent, and I’m here to tell the tale.
To more and more and more,
natalie
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