What has shaken free.

A lot of people were wondering and/or hoping if my fear and anxiety over certain things would lessen due to traveling to Europe. I will admit that early on I hoped they would. Perhaps they would drown in the ocean somewhere between Prince Edward Island and Iceland. I can tell you that didn’t happen.

But something else happened that is perhaps even more important: I lost a bit of the fear that looking back at an old life can bring up.

Since I am very fond of analogies, some days I go the entirety of my waking hours speaking in nothing. So I will give you one now. It’s probably one that if you’re over the age of 21 or so you have experienced more or less on the same level:

There comes a time in a person’s life when they have to grow up, and face the fact that life is albeit beautiful and miraculous, but nonetheless kinda mean and stupid too, and if a person wants to become a more or less successful adultish human they have to go on anyways and, well, get over it. I think it took me much longer to do this than your average person, and so maybe that’s why I had to do it in a hurry. It was like my being said “Dang guuuurrlll hurry it on up we don’t have forever!” and dumped my child-self into the rubbish bin labeled “too small” but forgot to tell me it was okay to save the pictures.

Another way of putting it is that I became disgusted with that old self, embarrassed and even offended by her imperfections and childishness, and subconsciously decided to pretend she never existed. Some junk got thrown out, some dirty water, okay a lot of scummy water, but also the baby. Yes, the proverbial baby was thrown out too, because she was apparently at one time too hideous to look at or deal with.

But I’m back from Europe and somehow that baby isn’t so scary any more. The baby, in case analogy isn’t your first, second, or third language, is important.

One might be tempted to be disappointed that my current hang-ups haven’t been “fixed” by my first overseas adventure of hopefully many, but I am not, so please believe me when I say that the gift of accepting the person I used to be is way more important and healing than anything I could have ever asked for. 

c. 2009