08/01/2021
I'll never forget our weiner dog, Oliver, that we had when I was in highschool. My mother had put a leash around his neck that she never took off, it wasn't attached to anything so it dragged behind him like the train of a sad wedding gown, she would use it to catch him in case he tried to go for the door. One day my sister came home from college horrified that the poor little thing never got a break from this restraint. In true Mancari fashion she made a show of liberating him from his bonds, unleashing him and proclaiming his freedom.
Oliver, not one for drama, placidly began to walk away making for his bed, until he realized his leash was not coming. He turned around cocked his little head and trotted back to his tether, picked it up and carried it with him.
damn.
In my previous post SELF-DOUBT
This was the feeling that washed over me. As I had begun to heal, as my identity was stripped away. I realized I was going through an identity crisis. I was no longer the broken, the dying, the victim, the tortured soul, I was just Chris, and then I wondered who she was without all that extra stuff. I am still learning how to let her be without shoving her into a box or demanding she fulfill some goal.
I wanted to address this because sometimes I think people hit this point in their healing and they get scared, they wonder what will happen when they give up certain identities, certain struggles. We see it all the time with convicts released from prison finding themselves reoffending, drug addicts relapsing and victims of abuse finding abusers.
Ya, we all do it, we get so accustomed to our restraints that even in the unfamiliar taste of freedom we shrink, saying "ya but I am not me without my pain, without my baggage."
But YOU are.
Though it has taken me some time and there are moments I still wrap myself back up in my leashes (and yes, there are multiple) I have learned every day to be more present, more me, outside of expectation and judgement
I now know that in each moment I get to choose to not pick up my leash.
If you wanted more --to be told how to surf 60 foot waves with one arm, this is it. If it sounds simple then why don't we do it more?
