Eventually you have to be unafraid of yourself and who you’re becoming. To embrace the signs of life stirring within, showing that a self-transformation is about to rise. Fear of change is natural. Metathesiophobia is in every human being.
But it is a newfound metanoia which I have been pursuing. It took me the better part of the two years since leaving my marriage to get here. The arduous road of spiralling depression, non-existent self-esteem and barely clambering by with what remained of myself. Some days it was with hesitant baby steps, but I was on my feet. Others, I was crawling towards the end of the day when I could hide under the covers of safety once more.
I am not coming back. I am not returning to who I was or merely resurrecting an old version of myself. This is a chrysalis. The pieces are being left behind in a pile where they are no longer required. Old, fractured, chipped and irrelevant. I am tired of that life. Reusing the same old shards when all they do is cut and damage. Standing in one place while the world moves on around me. Lingering in shadows when all it takes is a few steps into the light.
You won’t recognize this version. This isn’t the girl who was so continuously shattered over what used to be. There’s a new vibrance to this soul. A new hair colour. A different wardrobe. A resolved resiliency to carry on. Hell, I even began writing in a different genre, and I think it’s the one where I belong.
Fear not. “Edge of Glory” is still on its way to publication. This month, while on my three weeks off, I am editing the first of the series and then hopefully getting it sent to my editor by the New Year. So, 2020 is my tentative release date for it.
While “Edge of Glory” was on editing hiatus, however, I started a crime fiction series, inspired by a cowrite my best friend and I have been working on for years. The main character, Alyssa, a female criminal profiler, prompted me into this one. I created her as a character in an alternate-universe story my co-author and I were writing for our book for fun. I came to love Alyssa so much I couldn’t fathom discarding her character. She’s strong, resilient, intelligent, yet reckless when angry and has a softer side. Like that gentle rain right as a thunderstorm is calming.
It’s weird, sometimes, how in creating characters we find pieces of ourselves. My co-author told me once: “There is more Alyssa in you than you know.”
She knows me better than anyone. It got me thinking. Many of the positive personality traits I’ve put into Alyssa’s character are things I aspire to be, and yet many of her flaws reflect myself. The difficulty apologizing, shutting down instead of opening up to others and trying to do far too much alone for far too long. It started this self-transformation stage. Writing her character helped me evaluate my own flaws and their roots.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life stuck in a cycle of miserable depression. Standing still in a glass house of isolation I’ve built for myself over the last two years. Pushing everyone away while withdrawing further into shadows, trying not to exist at all. Trying to vanish without killing myself. Living like this has truly started to drive me crazy. There are nights I am still up, restless at 3 a.m. and break out in anger, breaking dishes and yelling for no one to hear. Crying in the bath. Sleeping all day. Barely making it to work on time.
I hit a wall. Well, crashed into said wall and finally broke the remnants of myself. As I stood in the wreckage, contemplating how many times I could continue picking up these pieces time and time again, it occurred to me:
What if... I abandoned these pieces and started all over? If rock bottom is truly the bottom, why take back out what should stay in the barrel? Hauling those pieces out with me every other time hasn’t worked. No wonder I feel like I’m losing my mind, doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different results.
So, fuck it. I turned 30 this year. It’s time to leave behind who I was in my 20s and embrace transformation. I want to soak in life with the same aeipathy I have used to write this new series.
Alyssa is also in this transition stage in the first three installments of “Beyond Dark”, following a breakup that’s left her desolate and heartbroken when nothing else seems to go right and she has a serial killer to catch. She needs to pull herself together rather quickly and leave the hurting for later.
It’s a start. I’ve dyed my hair the same colour Alyssa did following her breakup: black cherry, from natural brunette. I even cut it a bit. It feels life changing. I even went shopping for some new clothes and bought a few things I’ve never really worn before but am excited for the wardrobe change, from a hippie photocopy of my mother, to a rocker-writer aesthetic purely my own, inspired by my Hogwarts house, Ravenclaw.
I was out a pub with my sister the other night, sober, yet hitting up one habit that’s never gone away for me: karaoke. Met a guy I wound up talking to all night. There was a great amount of laughter and jokes, with a Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow duet thrown in, and it was the first time in a long time I have laughed that much, sober. It was also the first time going out to the bar with my new hair, a new outfit, and new Alyssa-attitude.
And the Alyssa-ism worked. He and I were discussing how difficult dating is, how fake people are and how men are always trying to be smooth players.
He at one point asked me, “Do I seem like a smooth guy to you?”
Without missing a beat and summoning my inner Alyssa, I bluntly said, “No.”
“Thank you!” he exclaimed. “Most women would have fed my ego, but you! I like you.”
All right, then. We’ll see what happens. Regardless, it was an uplifting moment to let my newness shine through. To let someone see what I am aspiring to be, and not the old me of the past two years, who was so terrified of socializing and getting back out there to talk to men. To have him look at me like I was something new.
Because I am.
