Change

After a lot of stops and starts, I think I’m ready to write this post. I’ve spent the past couple of hours trying to put down on ‘paper’ what has been rolling around my brain for a while and has become clearer in the past week or so. It’s just not flowing because I’m trying too hard to make it general and impersonal. The problem is, this is my blog and this is where I spew some of my personal feelings (and if you are reading it, thank you for indulging this seemingly narcissistic form of expression.)

So, here’s the thing. Just like every other human, I’ve had a lot of changes happen in my life lately. Some were horrible (my father dying) and some are wonderful (moving back to London). And, like most humans, I don’t always deal with change well, especially the bad kind.

However, while I struggle to cope with my father dying (judging by the 23 and counting years I’ve been trying to cope with my mother’s death, I’ve got a long way to go) I’m also trying to fully embrace the good changes. Being back home in London has been a huge turning point for me. I put my life on hold while spending three and a half years trying to get back over here. I refused to put down roots, didn’t make any new friends for the first couple of years and basically hid in a small town in Oregon until things finally fell into place and I could move back to my adopted home.

Now that I’m here I no longer need to put the rest of my life on hold. That’s a scary thought, to be honest, because, well before I moved to London the first time around, I had put a certain part of my life on a kind of hamster wheel (constant effort, but ultimately going nowhere). I had my reasons and they made sense at the time. Looking back and from a fresh perspective, the decision to stay on that hamster wheel was self-destructive and somewhat masochistic and stopped me from moving on and maybe allowing my life to change.

While I have managed to finally jump off that hamster wheel once and for all, the change has not been without its…uh…revelations? First and foremost, it’s amazing how much baggage you can collect while basically running in a circle. And while that baggage can act as a lovely protective coating, keeping you safe from getting hurt yet again it also acts as a barrier to being who you want to be and opening yourself up to new experiences.

This brings me to what prompted me to write this today (Ahhh, she does have a point to all this rambling!) What I’m finally grasping in my ever-advancing age is that sometimes even with the most positive kinds of change, you sometimes have to let go of things that no longer fit and/or are damaging to your happiness. It’s not easy but sometimes the baggage is just too heavy and is only dragging you down.

Maybe that’s not the most inspiring or uplifting message I can leave you with this time around but, I assure you, it is actually a positive thing. It’s freeing to realise that it’s actually ok to let go of things and make room for more change.