Chapter One
Welcome one and all (finally) to the twenty-twenties! Maybe it`s just my zoomerness showing (1998, the only good zoomers) and I’m just basking in the glow of my first-decade turn as an adult, but there’s something tantalizing about it. It’s like standing on the edge, being able to see something powerful coming just off the horizon. Now, that could just be World War Three, or it could be something more fulfilling. Most likely it’s this collective feeling of change, and with it bringing a new wave of energy. I noticed something interesting around the end of 2019 in videos, blogs, in myself, and from others. There’s an idea that nobody sat around and agreed on, but everybody seems to be repeating somehow. 2019 seemed to be a transitional year. A year preparing people for change, for better things, and it seems 2020 is holding a general optimistic feeling even if 2019 had its lows. It’s as if the new year would be a transformative one, a year of change.
Maybe you don’t buy into this whole connected cosmic hippy-dippy way of looking at things. You should at least be able to concede that we can make it this way if we really want to, and if we really try to, further than the usual resolutions fluff. The new year, maybe even more potently the new decade, can be powerful in its renewing energy. A new page is being turned, opening up a new chapter in life. This is a chapter where anything can be done if you just dare to write it.
There’s simply this heavy wave of possible redemption and beginnings, new and old, rumbling in with this energy that wraps around us. For me, this resuscitating force came at a time most necessary. It’s like an invisible hand lifting me out of this quicksand-like feeling of stagnation I`ve found myself trapped in.
I`m aware that it may not solely on account of the decade shift itself, but this surely is a capstone in the culmination of change. I`ve always lived with what one might call a pulled back starting line. Being involved in a head-on collision as a child, coupled with my struggles with sensory integration disorder, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, an unsteady childhood, chronic depression, social/generalized anxiety, and a long road of physical recovery set me out on forever traveling on a different path then the white picket fence life society prefers to push. I think with all that luggage sitting in my overhead though, I`ve done pretty well just getting to where I am now. Holding down a job, building the bare bones of a routine, finally actually writing something, and just trying to get a grasp of everything day by day. That said, there`s still this feeling deep in my gut that’s been hard for me to shake. That feeling that when the gun popped everyone started to run, but I ran after them from behind, unable to catch up, and that`s where I’ll always be. No matter how hard I work, everybody seems to be so far ahead of me and they all seem able to move so much more easily.
This suffocating notion that my problems, my past, and my glitches will forever hold me back weighs forever on my soul. Another side effect of all of that is this long draining numbness that has washed over me for many a year. A type of anesthetic, making things easier by just passing through, no real reaction or connection to anything. There’s just survival and reaction, pure in their forms. However, this is something I`ve found myself finally breaking free of as I begin to build something steady under my feet. Is it perfect, or where I truly want to be? No, but it’s the most stable the earth has felt beneath my feet in a long time, and I think that perhaps I’m finally at a place where I can build from. Even if it’s one step forward and two steps back, as it so often is, I’m still building and it’s still progress.
A big help toward all of this has been therapy, namely narrative therapy, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a psychotherapy method from a narrative perspective focusing on the stories each of us has and how they relate to our lives and their meanings in it. It’s been really useful in helping me realize that I can build on the chapters of my past and use those unique perspectives they have given me to build forward and use the skills that I have (such as my writing) to create a new chapter. “Rising out of Quicksand.” As much as society would like to construct some rigid timeline for life milestones and personal epiphanies, everyone’s time is their own, and maybe, just maybe, we’re coming up on mine.
2020 is bringing in this giant wind of change just as I’m on the cusp of being ready to receive it. I’ve been given a wave of inspiration to go forth and write the next chapter, and maybe I’m not the only one. As self-isolating as all of this can feel, like you’re adrift in a vast sea with no one around for miles, there’s more of our kin out there than our minds would like us to believe. If you’re broken, alone, feeling hopeless, stagnated, or just adrift, you are my kin. You’re the reason I wrote this, for both of us. This is a year of change and transformation, ushering in a decade of possibility, so let’s rise up and ride this wave standing shoulder to shoulder, writing our next chapters.
I’ll believe in you.
If you’ll just believe in me.
