let's get dirty

As I move closer to who I really am and take steps toward the life I really want, some of my old issues are rising to the surface and are clinging on for dear life.  Some of these old issues are like friends I’ve outgrown who don’t want to leave the party or company that has just stayed too long.
 
There are parts of me and ways of being that I’m done with, but it’s still hard to let them go.  It’s like these old ways are well lit superhighways, and I suddenly decided to go off the road without a car, a map or a flashlight.  I’m either bush whacking my way through ancient paths or I am going places within myself where I’m blazing a new trail.
 
All this hacking, this falling down, getting lost and getting dirty is exhausting.  I keep getting my heart broken, but I no longer blame the other person.  I can look at myself and see where I picked men who were a form of punishment.  They were tools (haha) that I used as a way to punish myself and feed some part of me that felt guilty for being.  I’m sooo done with that shit.  So done.  But.
 
These punishing man tools are climbing out of the woodworks lately, and some of them are hot.  I must not be lured back to the superhighway.  My arms are tired.  My feet hurt, and sometimes I want something familiar or just a nice drink of water from a well that I know is poisoned.  I’m ready to let this pattern go, and it’s trying to tighten its grip around my neck. 
 
On Saturday night, I took myself out on a date which consisted of dinner, a movie and dancing.  I saw the Queen of Katwe about a girl from Uganda who was a chess genius.  It was an inspiring true story that made me cry. One of the lines of the movie stood out to me.  The main character struggled with self-doubt and feeling like she didn’t belong in her new life.   Her coach at one point told her something like just because you’re comfortable with something, it doesn’t mean that you belong there.  I relate to that.
 
I’ve been fairly good about my exercise lately, and I’m working on my eating habits in a real way.  My eating habits are hard to change.  Eating has been a familiar form of self-punishment or self-neglect by either eating so much that my pants hurt, or I denied myself the foods I really wanted like honey because I gave up all forms of sugar for several months.  I’m going to start eating honey again by the way.
 
Dealing with my food issues is one of those things that brings up my deepest fears and insecurities about all kinds of things, and the less I use food as my go to coping tool, the more I’m left with my deepest fears and insecurities that have been waiting for me all along like kids who didn’t get off on the right bus stop, and now I have to deal with them and put them where they belong which is off my bus.  This is hard.  Those little brats like my bus, but I want them gone.  The ride is over.
 
So here I am.  I have struggles.  I have lots of great things in my life and moments of so much beauty that I’m humbled and overwhelmed and dazzled, and I have this other stuff too.  I’m shifting in really great ways that I’m excited about, but these shifts are not easy, and there are often tears involved.  And being lost in the dark is scary sometimes.  I don’t know where I’m going.  But I’m glad to be off the old superhighway.  Here’s to all of us getting lost and getting dirty.