A 34-year-old woman's quest, to return to herself.
Boxes…
Boxes, ranging from small to large. Some have names of rooms written on them, and some the lists of, its content,- all the things I own, safely bubble-wrapped like all my feelings and a broken heart for many years of my life. It’s funny how the things we are scared of the most, we end up facing at some point in our lives. I wipe the tears off my face and grossly wipe my running nose with my sleeve, a symbol of how much I couldn’t care anymore. All of my things are in boxes. My life I thought that I perfectly, and safely secured, semi-neatly stacked in boxes on top of each other, one by one, like a terror tower of Jenga, right before it comes crashing down to earth.
How did I get here? I have managed to ask myself this question, over and over again with little to no answer. How does one build a life, only to tear it down again? I ask myself all these rhetorical questions -about my life that once felt so constituent, so full, -and so right. Now finding myself years later, smothering in the lack of its joy, and chin deep in my own feelings of despair. Hi, my name is Scarlett, I am a 34-year-old woman, - who has no idea who she is anymore. And the voices in my head answered, Hello Scarlett, welcome, like I was attending some sort of meeting like AA, wondering to myself if there is maybe some 30-year-old anonymous group for people like me to join. Don’t get me wrong. My life up until this moment has been very fruitful, luscious in color, -and daring at most. But like all calm seas, at some point, you have to weather the storms of life. And fuck me, has my life not been a concoction of hurricanes, veld fires, -and God damn tornados the past few years. At some point I really thought I was going through some sort of rebirth, not like a Phoenix, rising gracefully from her asses. But more like a working donkey, being reincarnated in the Ice-age, only to find itself not equipped for the endless winter cold. I sat in my empty house, listening to the dog's little paws echoing for the last time, with another teary snot face wipe, and a goodbye whispered faintly in the back of my mind.
I have always been so terribly frightened to be alone. ALONE… Yet as I sit here in my once-filled home, now just an empty house, I came to the realization, -that I have been alone for a very, very long time. Never mind my unsuccessful marriage, a relationship of 13 years. I realized that the worst failed relationship in my life was the one with myself. I was so scared of being lonely, so scared that if I do admit that my marriage is failing, and I filed for divorce, I would find myself lonely. I wonder to myself how many of us, actually fear being alone, or may I even dare say lonely, not realizing that we are already alone. The terrifying truth is, I have been alone. I have managed to build a nice and fluffy secure life around others. Every single person, except myself. My greatest fear is something I have been living, day by day, for years. Like being stuck in the most, petrifying horror movie. Written, directed, and starred by me. The only difference is, that in my version, the pretty one, aka me, is not brave enough to go face what is scaring her, but she’s dumb enough to hide for years, in a towering fortress built for herself as shelter, like some fancy princess who is waiting for someone to save her. I roll my eyes at the mere thought of this, as I never thought of myself as a princess, more Queen than Princess. Brave is something I have always been, slaying my own dragons, and winning my won battles. Nevertheless, this is what I thought.
As I walk out, and take one last look at the last chapter of “my life”. I set on a journey, to try and discover who I am now, humming a song;
"Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky.
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one,
And a blue one and a yellow one.
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky,
And they all look just the same."
Your Mystic Muse,
Scarlett
Xoxo
