It is incredible to me the outpouring of love I have received from my "Dear Stranger" post. Thank you all! Because of this, I thought I would let you all into my muddled mind by explaining my inspiration for "Unraveled." At nearly every difficult point in my life I have turned to writing. When a wave of depression hit in high school, that I still can't quite explain, I wrote songs; I wrote poems; I wrote love letters. My first semester of college, when I was inexplicably homesick, I dove head first into my English literature classes - obsessed with learning to analyze stories and write the perfect essay. When I moved 800 miles away from home to a new city with new people, I threw myself into a blog about surviving professional school as a spouse. Then, when my husband came out, I was at my lowest point. I couldn't bring myself to do anything productive, let alone write creatively. Have you ever seen those animations, where the frame freezes and then a hammer shatters the scene into a million tiny little pieces? That is what my world was doing around me, but unlike the animation, it couldn’t be put back together again; at least not into the same picture. Now, this isn't meant to be a sob story. I don't regret falling in love. But when I felt so broken, that was all I could see. There came a point, shortly after I moved home to Michigan, that I decided it was time to figure out who I was... and who I was outside of my relationship. And that was something I had to do completely alone. While the help of an amazing therapist, generous friends, and outrageously supportive family certainly did their part in my healing process...I was the only one who could decide to be happy. I needed to learn to love myself, whoever that was going to be, before I could think about falling in love again.
Then Lent came along...yes, I'm serious. Lent got me back into writing. I made a Lenten resolution of reading or writing everyday for enjoyment. I do a lot of those things for work, but I had gotten away from my passion behind it. So on the Thursday after Ash Wednesday....(yes, I started a day late) I started writing. I wrote about whatever was on my mind. It wasn't always about my love story, but it certainly lead the charge on common themes. That is when I started to remember how therapeutic writing is for me. It transports me into a world where I can share my feelings with powerful imagery, extensive imagination, and the ability to end my story however I may choose. So that is how I landed here. At "Unraveled." A place for me to spread my mended wings. A place for me to start showing the world how I've raveled myself back up again. A place to be me.
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AuthorRaveling myself back up again. Archives
December 2017
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