I miss it.

I miss writing.

I don't miss the spiraling.

Okay, that's not fully right. Not fully write.

It feels strange to look upon those times with any bit of nostalgia. Because I remember the mind swirling, the panic, the frantic typing to try to keep ahead of the screaming in my mind. Did I ever write about that screaming? I remember it well. I remember researching if it was something common -- something people commonly experienced and was just a normal thing. I remember reading about schitzophrenia and deciding that it didn't fit. I remember wondering if the voices in my mind offering up viscious castigation upon mineself were my own or if they were projected from elsewhere. If they were my own thoughts, why were they behaving that way? Why couldn't I control them? Why were they racing and treating me so poorly? Did I really hate myself that much?

And where was the screaming coming from?

To this day, I don't know if my brain was just projecting the torturous scream into my consciousness as a tangible echo of my feelings or if I was actually experiencing audible hallucinations. I couldn't tell the difference then, and retrospection doesn't add any clarity either.

I think a part of me still wants to save her. I think a part of me still thinks I can write her into safety. I think a part of me still wants to be seen and maybe my words will reach the eyes of someone who will connect with me.

But do I even need that anymore? Is that why I stopped writing? Is because I realized that it couldn't save me? Or is it because I saved myself and didn't need it anymore?

I saved myself.

I did.

This means truth is in the middle. The trauma from within stopped when it couldn't compete with the devastation caused by reality. Having been in a traumatic, abusive relationship, I stopped focusing on the past, and went into actual survival mode. It was no longer safe to write. Every piece of who I was was in fight or flight mode. When you are forced to delete old emails, have any piece of who you are examined harshly and judged and attacked by an external source, you stop putting yourself out there. You stop writing, because it isn't safe, because what if he finds it? It was too dangerous to write, to exist. Revealing any piece of who I was, offering it out to the universe, added more fuel to the fire. I wasn't willing to risk the parts of me he hadn't yet found and destroyed. So I held them close, protected them, hid them away so they couldn't be damaged.

And as awful as it was, I think it interrupted my own self-destructive patterns. I think it allowed me to choose to love myself, protect myself, stop fighting myself. Because you can't keep attacking yourself when you are already getting attacked.

So I stopped writing. Because writing wasn't safe. So I had to find other ways to cope.

And then I had my beautiful son. I'm not sure how to put it out in writing that I was blackmailed into keeping the pregnancy. That sounds so awful to put in writing. I think that's another part of it, actually. Writing is sharing truth, and the truth isn't always safe. The truth won't protect my son. And when you're initially raising him in an unsafe environment, your only goal becomes to protect him. So instead of trying to save myself, trying to save other broken people when I couldn't save myself, I sent my focus elsewhere, on protecting the person that I brought into this world.

And then, when we finally escaped that environment, for good, I was different. Traumatised, yes, but a different type of trauma. It wasn't the trauma of my teenage years. And when I escaped, I was free. Freer than I was even before it happened. When I was in an environment that wouldn't offer love, I had learned how to love myself. Seeking love from the outside wasn't an option, so I found love the only place that I could -- from within.

So what does writing offer me when I've found the healing I was seeking from it?

Am I still writing to be seen? Am I still writing to an unknown audience -- if you build it, they will come, style? I think, a bit, yes.

I think part of it is wanting all of me to be known. I think, while I no longer base my worth on how interesting and compelling I am, there's still parts of me that want to be interesting, to be compelling, to put myself out into the universe and have someone read it and go, oh, this rings true for me. Or oh, she's interesting. Or say, hey, I see you and I want you to write more so I can know more. 'I think you have value.' 'I think the world needs your words.' 'I connected to your words, so I connected to you.' 'Don't hide yourself.' 'You are exactly what the world needs, exactly as you are.'

But at the same time, why would I still need that from the universe? Is the instinct just leftovers from a long-held pattern of behaviour and desire from the before-time?

Because I have someone who doesn't need that of me. Who prefers me ordinary. Who refuses to be my audience, because he doesn't need me to perform. He just wants me to be. Not performing competence. Not performing intruigue. Not performing depth, or drama, and especially not performing pain. I don't need to be the wounded girl. I just need to be. And it's so freeing.

When we first started dating, I was pretty fresh out of the abusive relationship. I had a two year old. I fell for him because I thought he'd be safe to fall for. I thought he'd never be interested in me, because he'd never shown interest in anyone. Gay? Probably not. Asexual? More likely. Not interested? Almost definitely. But I saw in him kindness, patience, and a complete disconnect from the drama of others. He was beautiful in his simplicity. I think, at that point, I was finally drawn to the right thing. Trial-by-fire finally taught me how to love myself, and accept the right kind of love from someone else.

To my surprise and delight, he actually was interested in me. And his steady existance in my life without expectation was perfect, and confusing. He wasn't attracted to competence. Yes, he was impressed, and saw the value in it, but it was clear that it wasn't the motivating factor. Nor was he embedded in drama or intruigue. He just needed me to be me, whomever that was.

So, I had to figure that out. Who was I? When I loved myself, was loved by someone else, and didn't have to perform anything to keep that love, who was I?

He also didn't set boundaries on that. I could be the girl who liked going partying. I could be someone who liked hanging out with friends. I could be someone who liked reading, or crafts, or was extraverted, or intraverted. I could be someone who liked paddleboarding, or hiking, or writing, or gaming. I could be someone with drama, or with no drama. I could love travelling. I could have a messy house, or a clean house. I could have a messy mind, or a stable mind. And whatever definition of 'me' I finally landed on was okay. He would be there, happy to grow alongside me, or stay stagnant. We taught each other by watching each other. By being with him, I learned stability. I learned to be comfortable staying still. I learned that just 'being' was okay, and days without being exceptional was also okay. By being with me, his world expanded as I introduced him to travel, to striving for achievement, and allowed him to realize that he was also more capable than he knew and had more value than he realized.

He also had no interest in my past. Not in a bad way, as I initially assumed, but it was of no consequence to him. Whatever I had lived through was in the past had helped structure whatever I now was, but he wasn't an audience to it. He didn't need to hear about it. Didn't really have any fascination or interest in it. And at first, I didn't love that. After all, I was still at the point where it mattered. How could he truly see me if he didn't peek behind the curtain?

But, instead of activating that panic or spiral into disappointment, it actually did the opposite. His non-chalance and the lack of importance he put on needing to understand everything and apply meaning to everything and connect all the dots to figure out the bigger picture and how it was formed gave me permission to take it off the pedestal too. Oh. I can just be? Without investigation? Without crafting a symphony and epic of everything just to... to what? To prove that my life mattered?

If my life wasn't a sweeping epic, if my life wasn't worth writing about, would it still be worth living? Would it hold my interest?

I didn't want to be a boring person.

Let's be clear, I still don't want to be a boring person. But at this point, I think I've lived enough life that I can pause and just be. I can plan my next trip with my kids and get excited about it, without needing it to be lifechanging. I can go to work, and do a good job, and advance my skills and my career without needing it to be exceptional.

I can also be exceptional without needing others to recognize that. I can do it for myself.

Not always. Let's be honest, I'm not some monolith to myself who doesn't need the recognition from others. But now, the recognition doesn't need to be loud. It doesn't need to be constant. I don't need to have others gaze upon me and go 'wow'.

And I'm reading what I'm writing, and it all sounds so self-centred. Me, me, me. I know my writing has often been that way. And maybe that's another reason I've gone away from writing. I've turned my focus outward on other interests. I don't need to constantly self-examine or force meaning into something.

And I worry that makes me less intuitive, more dull, less exceptional. But maybe that's okay. Or maybe, the truth is that, hopefully instead, I'm less exhausting. And maybe I leave room for other people to be whomever they are, instead of casting them in the role of who I need them to be. When life isn't turned into an epic at every turn, it can just be lived.

People are coming over any minute for Dungeons and Dragons. I should probably wrap this up.

Maybe I will start writing again. And maybe I'll let that writing be whatever it is, without forcing it to have meaning or win a Pulitzer with every word.

Maybe the writing doesn't need to be scary, or wonderful. Maybe it can just be, and the meaning will follow, or it may have no meaning at all, and that's okay. Sometimes, getting words on a page can be okay by itself, without needing to construct perfect form. Like this. This writing meandered, and as writing often did, a lot of it came into existance as I wote, because it allowed me to process.

And I feel a sense of peace right now. And I remember this sense. This feeling where I took some time with myself to process the concepts that are below the surface. Maybe this is my meditation. I remember now why I used to write. It was for this. It was the way I expressed myself, even when no one was asking, even when no one was interested or talking to me or curious. And it allowed me to be allowed to exist in whatever form I existed in at that moment.

And yes, it often was chaos or spiral or over-the-top. But maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a performance. It was me. It was me being me, in a space where I could be. Seen, or unseen, it was at least there. And I think I had to put fingers to keyboard again, without interruption, without a plan, without a need to have a beginning, middle, and an end. Without the need to be beautifully structured prose that would connect with others and teach lessons.

I think I'm going to start writing again. Because I wrote this. And maybe this isn't bad. Maybe this can just be, as part of me, because it's a part that, honestly, I don't really think I need to lose anymore. As long as I'm not doing it for an audience. I can be my own audience. I don't need to perform. I don't need you to like this. I don't need any 'you' to exist. I genuinely don’t think anyone will read this. That's okay. That's actually better. Because, for once, that doesn’t feel like proof of anything. 

I can be my authentic self, because I'm not having to write to a figmented audience. The audience is me. And 'me' now accepts me for whomever I am.

So maybe I'll write more. Because I'd like to meet me.