I am always slightly different from who I was at the start of this journey and I keep forgetting to account that when I reach back to explain myself,
I am always slightly different because the time that carried the weight of yesterday have already been replaced by something I did not sign up for and did not choose to,
I am always slightly different from the person I was at the beginning of this hard season, not exactly the same person who is writing this but somewhere inside the middle of it,
Am I making decisions for who I actually am right now or for the version of me that was afraid in a completely different room a long time ago,
I am always slightly different and somehow I keep returning to the same old understanding of myself as if the newest version had no say in any of what’s happening...
I have carried the same old wound across seasons that no longer hold the same weather they held when the original wound was first made,
I have carried it as though the conditions that created it were still present, still returning and still requiring the same defenses I built back then,
I have carried the shape of the original hurt into my own different rooms where nothing in this current room is asking me to hold it anymore, and yet I walk in gripping it firmly anyway.
What if the story I’ve been telling myself about my own identity is already outdated, and I’m the only one who hasn’t read the revised version of my old self,
I have carried the same wound across so many different chapters of myself that somewhere along the way I stopped checking whether it still belonged to who I am now...
I have learned things and then quietly forgotten them without realizing it, when I had to learn them all over again, now, I had to approach them all from a slightly different space,
I’ve learned things and forgotten them, and the forgetting wasn’t a real failure; it was simply a new body making room for the version of the lesson that could actually stick right this moment in time,
I have learned something true in one season of my life and then lived long enough to discover that the same truth looked completely different when the light shifted in a different ways,
Does the fact that I have to keep relearning the same lesson mean I am slow or does it mean the lesson is deep enough to keep showing me something it was saving for later,
I have learned things and forgotten them, and the space left behind is sometimes the most important place the next real thing could land on...
I keep watching myself grow and then narrowing again, and I used to call the narrowing failure when now I think it might just be how this works,
I keep watching myself change in directions I did not plan and did not rehearse at all, did not even want and finding that the unplanned versions of me have been some of the truest,
I keep watching the world I believed I had mapped, and it’s quietly shifting beneath me, the only thing that has ever provided solace is choosing to remain curious rather than becoming too rigid to what the future holds,
What if I stopped waiting to arrive at the final version of myself and started trusting that every version I have ever been was already complete enough for where it was standing,
I keep watching myself grow and unravel, and I am slowly understanding that the point is not to make it through unchanged, but to show up with both hands open and let it shape me…
Watchwords:
Deciding for the version of me from before
Carried the wound into rooms with no weather for it,
The forgetting made room for what could stick,
The unplanned versions have been the truest,
Both hands open to the becoming and unbecoming
Here is Tikatarot, who dares you to answer the question, “Who am I?”..
As and will always be reminding you to dream: