I used to thrive on constant change and disruption - I truly didn't know how to stand still. I couldn't comprehend simply being within myself without a bunch of nonsense piled on, stripped away of the distractions. Now I can't comprehend being anything but who I am at my core, nor do I have any desire to shake up my surroundings all the time like I once did. Maybe it's part of aging, but I believe it has more to do with rejecting my fundamental insecurities that drove me to always want to be someone else, somewhere else. I spent most of my life running away from who I was, hoping to find some other me who was somehow better, different, more comfortable. When I look at old photos there are thousands of versions of me. Dozens of apartments, identities, chapters, all very specific yet a blur at the same time. It's hard to see them all side by side and recognize them as the same person.
It feels great to sit still now. It feels great to string together days and months and years where I look like the same person I see in the mirror right now - aside from some serious weight loss - which in itself has brought me back to who I am at my core. Unburied me, unburdened me, freed from the globs of flesh that were masking what I have always been underneath.
This stillness feels so good that the littlest shifts feel like giant earthquakes to me now. When something in my life tilts just a bit off-center, I get this bottomless feeling of being disconnected. The littlest things can provoke that feeling. Routines disrupted, people not where they usually are, daily necessities changing in some way or other. It's a terrifying twinge that runs through me, and it takes every single part of me to not succumb to its gravity. I have to touch things, talk to other people, focus on what is still in its place to ground myself in the present. To know that the universe isn't collapsing on itself. To fill that strange sensation of being untethered from myself and the world.
I'm trying really hard to find a balance between being steady and stable, yet able to withstand the occasional speedbump. I need to be able to float away from my safe space and trust that I'm still tethered to this real me, in this real place. To know that I am not drifting off never to return again, or worse yet, to be abandoned, alone and forgotten. Every day is a lesson of trust. In myself. In my strengths to adapt and make it through. In accepting that change isn't always avoidable. To be confident that I will be ok, even when it feels like I will be anything but.