Diabolina Does Deep Thoughts in 2010

I've been wanting to write for months. Write-write. About things that actually matter. Not about fashion and the appearance of things but about what's beneath the surface, about the truth behind the facade.

There's so much I still have to process about last year. About my mom's surgery and what it did to our relationship and how much we both leaned on Mr. Diabolina and how amazing he is and how he's been focused on professional fulfillment lately and how I CANNOT make up my mind about what to do with my own career and how depressed that's made me for months...errr...years.

But like most things that are hard but good for you, I've been avoiding it. I've been distracting myself and not writing. I've been losing myself in people and technology and anything sparkly and pretty. I've been trying to forget.

But I finally wrote a little starter something. Started exercising that muscle again. Hopefully this keeps the ball rolling for me.

And hopefully it speaks to things YOU feel and think but avoid and repress. Hopefully it helps you feel less alone in those dark moments. I know sharing it helps me do just that.

***

Tonight, if you breathe deeply, you can smell the rain coming. You can close your eyes and practically feel the rain drops hitting your skin. You can sense the weather is about to turn.

Maybe that's why tonight, I can sense something else in the air, something more subtle but no less real.

Tonight, I can feel the winds of change coming. They are about to sweep through my life, disrupting and uprooting everything, rattling me awake, upsetting the balance, stripping me of the routine I cling to, wrestling away the semblance of control.

And so tonight, I feel what a person about to face a raging storm on the horizon feels. I feel afraid. Afraid of pain, afraid of loss, afraid of the unknown, of the dark, of the shadow.

I feel afraid, afraid, and more afraid.

And the fear quickly turns to anger and that anger eventually morphs into despair. And so here I sit with tears of despair mixed with anger and born of fear, burning my cheeks, blurring my ability to see, muddling my ability to think.

So tonight I have decided if I can't see or think I will feel my way through all this. I don't want to distract myself or numb myself or censor myself or focus on any one else. I want to confront the uncomfortable, I want to face what's churning inside me. I so desperately want to be brave - even if only for one night, even if only for my self.

Tonight, unlike most nights, I choose to write. I want to exorcise demons, I want to find solace in my own voice, I want to feel powerful and talented instead of broken and ordinary.

Tonight, like most nights, I am a greedy bitch and I want quite alot of things :)

Tonight as I type erratically on this keyboard, like a drowning person grasping wildly for any sort of lifeline, I confront the fact that days have turned into weeks and weeks have turned into months and months have turned into years and years have turned into decades.

And suddenly, tonight, a terrifying realization washes over me. My childhood and teens and 20s are gone...forever...never to return. And quickly my 30s will be too. They will slip away when I'm not looking and what will I have to show for them?

And suddenly there's the fear again. Ugly and mocking and ever a part of me.

Tonight, I look in the mirror and see a 32 year old woman. She is childless and directionless and exhausted and losing faith...in herself, in others, in destiny.

She wears a tired smile and pretty clothes...as a shield. To keep people from looking too closely, from seeing all the failures she sees.

Tonight I write and as the words flow out of me like blood onto the page, I wonder if I will ever feel fulfilled or even useful again. Will I ever feel a sense of purpose, will I ever even feel content.

Will I ever be that woman I aspired to be once upon a time when I was a little girl. That radiant and successful and fearless and happy woman, that woman that eludes me now.

Tonight I yearn for answers, I ache for resolution. Tonight I sit here utterly lost.

And yet tonight I feel hopeful. Because tonight I chose to peer inside and wrestle with what I found there.

And that has to be a good sign, that has to bode well for the future.