The week between Christmas and New Years Eve has always harnessed this odd juxtaposition. There is the craziness of multiple Christmas gatherings and events that mark the beginning and end of the time slot, mixed with the large empty space in between them. Enter intense sensory overload and equally intense silence.
This year strikes a little bit differently. This "in-between" matches the in-between I feel currently in my life. In-between the old and the new. Breaking down old ways of thinking and functioning to provide space for new, healthier pathways towards healing and peace. Trashing the bullshit "truths" that much of my upbringing and socialization tried to hammer into me and giving myself the space to acknowledge the pain it all caused. I'm recognizing that this in-between will take much more time than I had hoped.
A new in-between has struck me recently...one I was not expecting; in-between teaching and whatever comes next. I thought I would teach for 15-20 years but if I'm being honest with myself, I'm not sure how much longer I can do it. This is part of the problem...I wasn't being honest with myself. I thought I was simply being optimistic, hopeful that I had the ability and power to change the immense challenges that I have been facing within this profession. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between optimism and denial. We want so badly for something to be true, that we ignore the reality that has been hammering us into the ground all along.
Here I am lost. Unsure of how to move forward with purpose...to avoid sitting in the same chair I'm sitting in now another ten years down the road - burnt out, anxious, depressed, and ... lost. With mental health and personal growth, I have books, podcasts, therapists, journaling, and more to help guide me down the path. This is different. It feels as if I have nothing to guide my way...no path already trodden for me...just a immensely, expansive space that stretches out endlessly.
I suppose these two in-betweens are connected. I have no path guiding me towards what I "want to do with my life" because I lost myself somewhere along the way. Sometimes I wonder if I ever really had myself - or if I simply reflected the expectations and hopes of the people I was surrounded by. I suspect this to be the case. I suspect, that this in-between will also last longer than I find comfortable. For, it seems, that this discomfort - of healing my past and my present is what will eventually light my path for the future.
I cannot know where I am going until I know who I am, what I need to be whole, and what I want to truly feel alive. I must continue to trod these new pathways along my self-healing journey and see where they take me, see what they reveal along the way. I must embrace the sensory overload of the healing and the unknown and the deep, silence of sitting with myself and my own thoughts. Hopefully then, I will find a way out of this in-between. Out into a new space where I can bring my whole, messy, beautiful self and finally feel like I am found.
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