Day 22/365

The last week or so, I've been really relating to this quote from Anatole France. Particularly on Thursday as I laid for my massage and fought the urge to implode with pain and fear, I've been trying to remind myself that the changes I'm making though some are difficult, even painful, are being made so that I can create for myself the life I truly deserve to live. Free of the shell of a life I've left behind, the shell of a life that he left me with.

Lately, I have been feeling that melancholy more than I expected. And maybe Thursday's massage is part of it. It was a good thing, a necessary thing. But at the same time ever since early last week I've been feeling waves of melancholy. Nothing permanent, nothing damaging-- but it's definitely been there, rolling in and out like a tide. Sometimes, I remember pieces, moments from before it all happened. I remember the way it felt to wake up in the morning-- 6 years old, or 7... happy, content. If with nothing else than with myself.

I remember sometimes, feeling as though my heart was still open, that all would be right in the world. I remember sometimes, feeling as though the whole world was ahead of me. And that changed. And for 20 years I lived in a world where I was afraid and ashamed and in pain. I made myself a prison and stayed there. I suppose in truth, there are two lives I'm putting behind me. The life I had before him... and the life I had after him. All to make room for the life I choose to have now.

So I will take my moments of melancholy, I will accept them as signs that I am in fact moving forward. As signs that the life-- the lives I had before are falling behind me once and for all.