It’s hard to write when one feels they are unraveling. How do I bring these untethered threads together for a snappy blog post? While my tapestry of the faith I clung to and worked my darndest to be the most colorful, the most creative, the most correct, the most extravagant of faith weavers is being pulled at and undone, I feel like an onlooker. What do I do with all this yarn? What will I make for my future? Can I create something new, while the old has become undone?
There is the inherent grieving. The confusion. The disappointment. My tapestry was not the gift I thought it was. I realize those carefully chosen designs were not for me, but created for others. Those woven words and carefully constructed beliefs were spun for others. Directions of proper size, color and design granted by others. I feel no longer like the advanced master weaver, but someone who is now unsure if they can even pick up thread again.
As cliche as the saying has become, I am woke. I cannot slumber again. I cannot close my eyes and unsee what I have seen. Yet, I still yearn to make and create. My patterns are no longer chosen for me, my form given freedom. My space offered up to be something only I can sustain.
Piles of string, tangled, undone. It takes work and time to unravel the unraveling. Will I be patient and do the work, or shall I throw it away in search for something new, or give up the weaving all together? I’m sad. I’m frustrated. I’m exhausted. I’m lonely. I’m weary. Yet, I am here. I am hopeful. I am determined. I am grateful. I am what I am.
How do you reveal the piles of string on the floor without the scorn of the tidy folks, the experts, the pattern followers, the dutiful weavers?
Where are the safe places to be undone? Where is my guide in the new form? I take comfort in the other souls who have marched to their own drum or gathered scorn from their tribes. Oh how I despise to be despised. I love to be loved. I love to be the good one. The leader…. But not today. Today I must just be me. No goals. No when I …. then I… soon I can… just now, in the uncertainty. I let the string fall. I didn’t pull it, it was pulled…. But I must let it rest. It’s undone.