I am not changing. I am simply becoming.

I stood at my back door, staring out at the leafless aspens, a sky full of blue, the slight trails of snow on the mountain, and I chewed on the words “change” and “becoming.” I’ve been stuck on this idea that I am changing, turning into a new person. But that isn’t true, not at all. At the core of me, the very heart of my soul, I am still the same person. My world is different than it once was, and my face looks older, but I am still me.

If you knew exactly how many times I have to choke back tears, or how many times I am alone and cry out and let those tears make their way down my face, you might assume I need help. But never have I felt so much emotion. Like the slight hum of nerves on fire throughout my arms and legs, my heart is alive. It beats within me a pattern of growth, of possibility, of honesty.

You can lie to your self for only so long before your self finally demands truth. We often proclaim we had no idea we wanted to do this or that, but I think we do know. I think we stuff truth into the deepest places inside of us and gag the cries it emits when it has spent too much time in the dark. We deny what we know for the sake of doing what we think we’re supposed to do. Or in being afraid it will be too hard.

Ask yourself this: Where is my heart? Not “what do I like to do?” or “what is the practical thing to do?” or “what does society or mom or dad or husband or wife think I should do?” Where is MY heart?

When the lights go out and you are staring into the black, where does your mind go? When you ask yourself what you really want, do you lie or do you fantasize and then push it away? What do you deny?

One of my closest friends asked me many months ago where I see myself in 5 years. I gave her the honest answer. I told her where I see myself down the road, but I didn’t tell her what I’d like to see myself actually doing. I didn’t tell her because the road to doing that was too hard. That’s why she was asking me this question at that time. She knew I was making a decision in the middle of emotional heartache and chaos, as I am often wont to do, and she wanted an honest answer from me FOR me before I changed course.

There are so many things I don’t need anymore, or even want. But I feed off of them like a starving child feasting on dirt in order to fill the hunger. In order to feel. Do you do that, too? Do you stay with something long past its expiration date because to step away is too scary, to begin again is too hard? Do you stay because it’s what people expect you to do, and so you do it?

I watched a video showing a man at the age of 52 graduating from the police academy. 52. Wow. It’s not that I think 52 is old, but rather I’ve been looking at 37 as too late to try. I put limits on myself that I have no business even thinking about, yet I do it time and time again. I hear the clock ticking and assume it’s the countdown to my end, and whoops, I ran out of time and didn’t do what I really wanted to do. Why am I living an un-lived life? Perhaps the tick-tock of the clock is simply the reminder that it’s time.

Become.

Step into the me I know I want and can be.

Become.

Stop resisting out of fear, out of laziness, out of doubt. Get out the map, draw out the path, take a step, and become.

When the world says, “Give up,”
Hope whispers, “Try it one more time.”
-Author Unknown