Yesterday Chris returned to our life in the city and I stayed in my hometown to start rehearsals for this play. I walked back into the house after dropping him at the airport and it all finally hit me. This is a brave new world. I'm feeling homesick for Chris, for my friends, for my city, but I'm feeling so excited for what lies ahead. I'd be lying if I didn't add that I'm also ever so slightly shell-shocked.
It's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I have officially kissed a year of sadness, reproductive disfunction, and surgeries goodbye and now my feet are planted firmly in something brand new. It is maybe a bit strange to begin something totally new in your childhood home--a place so thoroughly steeped in nostalgia--but it's also perhaps the most fitting place to start. Everything is so familiar and yet my whole world has been broken down and built back up since last I was here for any prolonged period of time. It has left me feeling just a bit like a ghost wandering the halls of a former life looking for the place I fit (but, you know, a friendly-style ghost in a cute little hat, nothing too scary). Looking at old photos and revisiting old haunts has only functioned to intensify this feeling of distance and newness.
Anyone who has dealt with any form of acute or chronic medical issue (certainly not limited to miscarriage or infertility) knows that it threatens to nudge your real life aside and take up residence as your sole raison d'être. It is exhilarating to be faced with the realization that the path that is set in front of me now has nothing to do with needles or hormones or health insurance or my uterus (and the entire internet took a collective sigh of relief that they were granted a reprieve from hearing more about those things for a while). With this exhilaration, however, comes some measure or terror of walking into the unknown. I haven't done any acting in a year and a half--and just under a year of that was spent under the oppressive burden of biological and medical obstacles. I feel like I'm stepping into an experience that used to feel like second nature to me as a whole new person. There is a fine line between the feeling of flying free and the feeling of a free-fall, friends. And here I am (happily) suspended in air somewhere between the two. Maybe the best way to respect the emotions and the journey of the past while simultaneously moving forward is just to jump in with both feet and trust the lessons learned will function as a parachute. I have no clue what is about to unfold (that part, at least, is not new), but I feel totally ready to give myself over to the process. I predict that I will look back on this time as the slow crawl to the crest of the roller coaster just before it plunges me full-speed into all 2015 has to offer.
It's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I have officially kissed a year of sadness, reproductive disfunction, and surgeries goodbye and now my feet are planted firmly in something brand new. It is maybe a bit strange to begin something totally new in your childhood home--a place so thoroughly steeped in nostalgia--but it's also perhaps the most fitting place to start. Everything is so familiar and yet my whole world has been broken down and built back up since last I was here for any prolonged period of time. It has left me feeling just a bit like a ghost wandering the halls of a former life looking for the place I fit (but, you know, a friendly-style ghost in a cute little hat, nothing too scary). Looking at old photos and revisiting old haunts has only functioned to intensify this feeling of distance and newness.
Anyone who has dealt with any form of acute or chronic medical issue (certainly not limited to miscarriage or infertility) knows that it threatens to nudge your real life aside and take up residence as your sole raison d'être. It is exhilarating to be faced with the realization that the path that is set in front of me now has nothing to do with needles or hormones or health insurance or my uterus (and the entire internet took a collective sigh of relief that they were granted a reprieve from hearing more about those things for a while). With this exhilaration, however, comes some measure or terror of walking into the unknown. I haven't done any acting in a year and a half--and just under a year of that was spent under the oppressive burden of biological and medical obstacles. I feel like I'm stepping into an experience that used to feel like second nature to me as a whole new person. There is a fine line between the feeling of flying free and the feeling of a free-fall, friends. And here I am (happily) suspended in air somewhere between the two. Maybe the best way to respect the emotions and the journey of the past while simultaneously moving forward is just to jump in with both feet and trust the lessons learned will function as a parachute. I have no clue what is about to unfold (that part, at least, is not new), but I feel totally ready to give myself over to the process. I predict that I will look back on this time as the slow crawl to the crest of the roller coaster just before it plunges me full-speed into all 2015 has to offer.
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