that was then and this is now, or the new world order according to me, or manifesta on the brink of 37

I medicated. Raged.  I swore and railed and threw stuff until it shattered. I cried for what seemed like hours on end.  I lost entire days and months.

And then I made a mess with no inkling of how to clean it up.  (A mockery of housewifery if ever there was one).

I opened the windows and yelled outside as loud as my throat and lungs allowed, without a thought to the neighbours.  (I was always profoundly awful at keeping up with the Jones anyways).  I used to think I was a failed June Cleaver, but can you really fail at something you were never meant to be?

I let myself be selfish and found it made me grow bigger and bolder.  I curb-stomped terror masked as immobility.  And I moved.  I found a new rhythm of me-ness and it made me somehow more beautiful.  And resilient. And different.

I realized.  I realized that just because I'm sweet inside doesn't mean I have to be a doormat.  Just because I'm soft outside doesn't mean I can't be also be hard and fierce and tough-as-nails.  Just because I want love in my life doesn't mean I can't also have one eye on the door.  Doesn't mean I won't use it should the need arise.  And if I lose sight of that emergency exit, I'll find that one open window and use it to jump towards the nearest road, thumbs out and ready to go.  Seems I'm all kinds of scrappy like that.  It doesn't mean I won't wonder, regret, ache.  It's just that I've discovered I prefer the ache of lonely to the ache of swallowing myself whole; to jumping all over myself to be sorry when I have no idea why; to choosing everyone else over me.

God, if you only knew how tired I used to be.  Not sleepless tired, although that too. But bone-weary, ghost-of-myself kinda depletion.  Tired of being so careful, so caring of everyone but me.  Tired of the tiptoe.  Tired of feeling so grateful for love, as though everyone was some kind of gift to my life but me.

Well fuck that.  (Yes - you read me right.)  Because if you have me, let me be the first to let you know: you're damn freaking lucky.  I am all kinds of good shit.  Tricky?  Hell yes.  But so worth the wrestle.

This is my new world dis/order.  Not so much me first as me too.  

Don't think I can?  Maybe not.

But just watch me try.