A Time of Transition and Stretching Towards Surrender

I remember this cafe. The one I'm sitting in. I was here two years ago. Another time of transition. A road laid out before me. Things are not so different now. It makes sense to feel comfort here. Here in my oversize knit sweater. My black rimmed glasses. My too dirty hair. It is the scene. On another day I might resent it. Today I'm grateful to have a touchstone for change. Two years passed and this place is the same. It makes it easier to get to work.

And what is the work that is laid out before me? The work of transformation, transition? The work of visioning and grieving and holding the many possibilities before me. The work of reassessment. Is this where I want to be? Where do I want to go? How do I get there? WHAT DO I NEED?

I have become skeptical. This illusion of stability has slipped again and again. I have slipped with it. Slipped into judgment. Into fear. Into ambivalence.

My therapist wont stop talking about ambivalence. About how it factors into my dating, my housing, my work. About how it so primarily informs my life. I'm working on it. I'm working on certainty. Or no, not that, I'm working on clarity. I tell myself I had it once. I think I'm lying.

So I am here. There are a few things I know: I want to feel like part of a family. I want a home. I am not clear on what home means. I need more space. For my heart. For my body. I want to be good at my work. I want to feel free. I want to feel rooted. I want to be held. I am afraid of change. My job pays me well. I still cannot afford to pay all my bills and go out dancing. I have to make a choice. Something needs to change. I want more than I can afford.

I am afraid of change. The feeling of how it once was is always just under the surface. A warning, a paralysis. I have struggled to get this small slice of stable. I have struggled to find friends who weren't playing at their own ways of dying. I have struggled towards crisp vegetables and away from hunger. I have struggled with love that has leveled instead of lifted. I have struggled to be able to stay still. In the same place. The same apartment. The same body.

It is terrifying to feel like one wrong step lands you back in all of that. And it is a feeling. Not a reality. At least not likely. But that feeling, that fear, it's a big one. Takes up a lot of room. Has guided my life thus far. I do not know how to let go of it. I do not know if I want to.

I remember looking down. Looking for a safety net after others had showed me theirs. And I did not find one. Not family. No unearned money. Not friends. I feel the same way now. But both are untrue. Both are harmful ideas I created myself. Both are reflections of stubborn self-will. The stubborn self-will born of survival.

What does it mean to let go? To stop fighting? To realize there is so little to fight against (here)? What does it mean to fall into flexibility? Into uncertainty. To knowing that steadfast survival skills are, now, a barrier to flourishing. What does it mean to know that the best way to get what I want is to surrender? And what if surrendering feels impossible? What then?