What Now?

And so, almost a month to the day after walking out of my brick & mortar shop for the last time, and then completely falling apart— I am sitting here working on piecing myself back together.

I have written so many paragraphs, rambling prose, and bullet point lists to try and make sense of what I want to come next, how to figure out what’s next, how to reconcile with decisions made, and chances lost.
Coming to terms with choosing, once again, this town. Which I struggled calling my home the first time around, let alone the second. It being far from the county lines I am much more akin and accustomed to.

This transition was not forced on me.
I chose it. Welcomed it. Was eager for it.
For the thing that preceded it was breaking me. In more than one way. In many ways. But namely in one that has all but eradicated my ability to be curious about other people. A trait I always used to pride myself on.
For curiosity is the window to the world.

But now that I am here on the other side of this transition, I am aware all too fully of the weight of it, what it means. How holding this, means that is now no longer an option.

I thought I knew fully, thought I knew that this was the next right thing, and then I all-at-once realized that I didn’t.
This wasn’t the next right thing, merely the thing that I chose.
But I am also coming to realize that I largely will always feel that way, no matter the decision, with each new direction dictated and decided, I will feel as though there is something over there, that I should move towards instead.

My Father, in indirectly hurtful terms has called this flakiness.
My friends— what makes me the artist that I am.
My husband— something that just is.
And so I am coming to terms with that too. Holding that gently and working in and around what that looks like and means in this context of being 32, not 22. When a decade ago, this wandering and searching spirit was more expected, accepted. A decade later, the wanton rambling way of decision making and solidification of a life constantly untethered is less charming and more chaotic.

And yet, there are elements of this sample self that need not be so critiqued and redirected. There is something to learn here, as there always is. A gentle balance of course must be struck between all of our opposing parts.

And parts I certainly have.

For instance—I thought that the resentment part that I had growing inside of me would go away upon closing this one door, but instead I found that it only grew.

I came to the realization over the summer that it has been fourteen years since I started sharing pieces of myself on the internet.

That realization has come with an alarming awakening of grief.
Grief for the life I have spent on and behind a screen.
Grief for the lives I could have lived but can no longer.
Grief for the young girl who innocently started a blog and now feels as though she spent the majority of her life selling her soul online to pay her bills.
Grief for feeling as though I had no choice.

What comes after feelings like that?
How to separate the weight and meaning and the realization that this self-made world was one of my choosing?
What would I rather have in exchange, if not this?

And as much as I long for privacy, for quiet, for slowness and especially anonymity… I can’t stop.

I feel the urge, the tugging, to share.
If even into a void.
(Sometimes, blessedly into a void— with no response or feedback of any kind…)

And as I wrestle with the dichotomy of it all, what it is to have built a successful and thriving business from the ground up, but the success of which relies on one woman’s heart being shared intimately and compellingly nearly every day…

That comes to the present figuring out— What now?