I have been sitting on quite a lot. For weeks and weeks I have been wanting to write. Not just here, but I have an armada of stories, too, which need development. I mean, if you’ve read me ever you’d recognize I am pretty opinionated, and there has been no shortage of ego challenges to keep me entertained with my own shitty inner dialogue I add to situations. Lately I’ve kind of let that go a lot of the time. Entirely would make me, something less than human I’ve been afraid to discover. I really don’t know but there is a part of me that has been pretty comfortable sitting in my own skin lately, even recognizing the rubble that my person has become right before my eyes.

No, no–this isn’t some sappy woe is me baloney tale, though I’ve told my fair share of those too. I am just kind of over it. I know, I know, you all thought at one time I’m sure, wow, what a strong girl she is, going through all that, thinking I am some kind of mythical thing I am not. I went through all that, as you would, too-paying close attention to the idea, no, the reality that self-preservation is an innate instinct that gets sparked when you need it, and certainly not before. Trust me, many of you will understand this in time–it might take years, it might be tomorrow, but this is something that we all have in us, even with just a spark of will to live.

Admittedly, though, I actually hated everyone who had it easier than me, which means I kind of hated all of you, pretty much every day 24/7. I saw you all enjoying your happy little college lives, your happy little house buying and husband-securing selves. And then you all started having babies, and that made me feel even worse. It fueled the woe is me, poor Deanna bullshit mantra I had fashioned for myself as a sort of armor. It was who I was, what I knew. “Hi, my name is Deanna, I’ve had open heart surgery,” I didn’t care that you didn’t ask, I was going to tell you, because it was the simplest way for me to explain myself to you. I let it be the thing I told you almost first, before I even told you anything else. I never mentioned that I liked to write, and to paint, and that I wanted to be an interior designer, then a fashion designer, then an inventor when I was a kid. It wasn’t relevant once I told you about my heart, because really, wasn’t that enough of a person for me to be? I didn’t know what I liked beyond the superficial things, because they weren’t a part of my daily dialogue, but my damn sickness certainly was. I didn’t know what I was really good, truly excellent at, I didn’t even think to care about that given it really wasn’t a consideration. And really, who has time to figure out what they want to be when they grow up? There are bills to pay and health insurance to secure. And oftentimes I was convinced I was going to be dead soon anyways, so really what was the point?

And so yeah, I guess I did survive. And what the hell else was I supposed to do, but base level surviving? I literally went through all of those tumultuous early mid and late 20’s feeling like I was going to die at any moment, and sometimes secretly hoping I could go that way, because the alternative (the bomb actually going off) seemed a little too awful to watch myself go through, again. But there was very little in terms of my own personal exploration, as self-aware as I have now become, it’s very true I didn’t really ever think about how I felt. How does that make me feel? Fuck if I knew–I was cool. I survived, I got over it. “I’m good, I’ve got this surviving shit down pat, ” I’d say, horrified I couldn’t literally care one way or another.

So I’ve been doing this yoga thing, I am sure I mentioned more than once. And it’s awesome, and it introduced me to some breath work practices I got more involved in…and so a month ago I had these realizations above after an entire weekend retreat, and it was one of those sad, why did it take me so long to realize all of this moments? How could I not recognize I skipped over that testing and learning and being okay with yourself thing because I was lost in my own mind, trapped inside a my head watching myself through all kinds of horrible possible ends? I was horrified, and I cried, understanding why I had such a hard time defining myself.

**But now, a month later, I am a little more aware of this thing, and I actually have refused to mention my physical situation to anyone unless they ask. It’s a weird thing, but it’s definitely feeling much less suffocating, and much more freeing to let go of that story and help fashion a new one…