Chrysalis

I returned from Italy a month ago, back to my parents’ in Delaware. The trip was monumental and mundane. It wrung me out and it shot me full of life and then did it again, and again.

This past year, give or take, has been full of that same kind of breaking and rearranging, and I’m trusting it’s like the time between, when caterpillars are mush before they’re butterflies.

I’ve been spending time with my 6 month old nephew. We have a lot in common — so much content to input, so many things to learn about self, and others, and the world, and new memories to make and revisit later. Vulnerable and helpless and capable and individual all at once. Mush. And he’s teaching me how to be trusting, demanding, in awe and present.

Someone who knew me and loved me really well a long time ago recently told me I need to give myself more grace. And despite the intermittent feelings of rejection, displacement, fear, I’m learning that my value isn’t contingent on my usefulness to others.

I’m recognizing how much healing I have to do, how much people already appreciate me, how little the past narratives have to matter, how strong I still am, how the decisions I made were the best I could make at the time, how much I’ve seen and felt, how the fear of failure is more painful than the ‘failure’ itself, that I have nothing to be ashamed of, or afraid to admit, that I don’t have to painfully exert control to fit in a container, or hide my light under a bushel basket, and instead, I can be loved as myself and all that entails.

So this summer is a recharging, not a dimming.

I’m staying away from Instagram and alcohol for the time being, and writing more here, about Italy, about my continued struggle with skin picking, about living with my parents after 17 years away, about creativity, about comparison and shame. And if that’s not a laundry list to keep you coming back, I don’t know what is!