transitions happen short and continuous

[I'm not going read, re-read and then re-re-read these posts. There will be mistakes. I am mistake-ridden]

I'm starting with this picture of Kelsey - this new friend of about a year. I'm starting with it because she is sitting here on the couch with me in the cottage. We hit it off, I'd say, running in the white mountains and getting me go out hard on runs... rather than waiting around in my body until I felt I might be capable or strong enough. She has helped me be confident. She has helped me feel like I belong out there; the alpine, the elements, the needs, the sensations.

[flatbread gals night 5.x.23]

I wanted to sit down and write about my mount chocorua race because it kind of shook me.  It feels like a small metaphor for what change has been for me over the past decade. 

I thought I might start a new journal? Or maybe just some random paper sitting around somewhere? Then I realized I made a blog a long time ago. I guess a long time ago? It doesn't really feel that way. Zanzibar feels like yesterday. Yet I remember the first month I was in Zanzibar I felt like the longest span of time since maybe... I used to sit and wait for Christmas to come. 

[mt. chocorua. 6.11.23]

In some ways I'm so much more of a child these days. But perhaps I'm just reckoning with a lost child inside me. I suppose all those tantrums in therapy do count for some of the beautiful "childish" behavior I am now exploring. It's been over 10 years since Zanzibar, my 21st birthday, and the onset of the mental/persona breakdown that included a physical deescalation; pain, pain, and more pain. There is more that will come out about this time as I start writing here more. I don't need to try to fit it into a narrative for anyone, I know that. And I know that my loved ones and friends have been there and have been witness to a massive transformation. The weird thing is that there is nothing romantic about a transformation. It's fuckin' messy. I'm like the dead plant matter on the bottom of the aquarium. I'm sludge. Transformation is subtle and gross and uncomfortable. They come with loss and sobbing and attempts, again and again, to fix or find the self. 

[with nicole levi arlo 6.1.23]

Okay, so just know I'm going to start doing this more. I'm going to start expressing myself somewhere that is a slower process than social media. I only started with istagram in 2016 and it somehow feels like a sibling that's been there my whole - an annoying and persistent sibling. Go away.