Change is an Instantaneous Shock | Sunday Soliloquy
There is something to be said for change.
In spite of all our collective grumbling that change is difficult, that it takes a long time, that “we” — because really, who is we? — are afraid of change, once it occurs it seems it is instantaneous and absolute.
I am slowly preparing to move out of my mother’s house right now, and when I walk about my room now, moving things around, taking stock of my belongings and the boxes into which they will go, I feel like the beginnings of a tidal wave.
The waters are creeping out to sea, sick perhaps of the sins of the land-dwellers, leaving all manner of shore flora and fauna to wrestle with the sky for oxygen and safekeeping, a futile endeavor. The tidal wave is building, the change is already in progress, but most perhaps will not see it until it is too late to run from it.
Perhaps it is in that lack of sight, the refusal to see the change coming in the smallest of deviations, that has produced our cultural terror of a future we did not predict.
There is an unfreezing taking place in my life I believe. I have been tip-toeing around my own happiness for decades, peering up at the place in my mind where I keep my frivolous dreams of contentment and a colorful life. It is a wretched existence, to have in one’s mind a museum full of blessings one does not believe possible.
Still, it is lovely to dream.
And yet, here I am watching the slow melting of some part of me I was forced to leave behind for the sake of “growth”, for the sake of portraying myself as the kind of human being others prefer over that which I truly am.
I do not know what lies beneath this thick sheet of ice I have allowed to form in my own heart, or what I felt necessary to do to in order to maintain this self-directed apathy for so long.
But a heartbeat pulses beneath it all. Inside, even through all of the trauma, the near-death experiences, the gaslighting and disbelief of others — inside I am still alive.
The further into my own past I dig in preparation for this move, the closer I get to unearthing this ancient part of myself. I wonder perhaps, that I am a dream she has lived in these 29 years of existence. Once her eyes open and she comes into awareness of all that exists quite outside of our control, we both will understand the full scope of the word: ‘boundary’.
Where do I end? Where do you begin?
What does it mean, that I am me, and that all others outside exist as the ‘everything’ that I am not?
Perhaps we will come to see ourselves as a venn diagram with the world. Perhaps everything and everyone is not so disconnected, the space between us not so absolute as we might believe.
Having my own space to breathe is important though. The space between us is also ours, but the distance I need from you is mine to maintain. To breathe, to eat, to sleep, to fuck — in peace. To not feel so smothered by the desires and judgments of others. To know my own desires, my own judgments, apart from those others wish me to support for them.
And what a powerful change that would be.
Me: a tidal wave, slowly creeping away quite unnoticed, harmless and insignificant.
Me: a tidal wave, resurging unstoppable, crushing all bindings that kept me from my blessings within, without. Absolutely terrific.
~ C. Louise Williams
