Of Anchors and Kite Strings

 I've tried to write this post a dozen times in a dozen different ways and none of them have worked. Today, I'm going to attempt to tell the story in sparse, one line increments. This feels like the only way through. 

I don't remember the day I shouldered the weight.

Maybe I never even chose it.

Maybe it was given to me like a name. 

This is the story I try to lock away when I sit down to write.

But I've never been able to throw away the key.

My dad left when I was fourteen.

I couldn't fix it.

And I couldn't find words for the pain.

But life never stops.

Never waits till we are healed or whole before moving on.

So I stumbled forward.

Into love. Into marriage. Into motherhood. Into a community.

And it all seemed okay until last summer when I couldn't sleep and couldn't stop crying and couldn't draw a full breath.

I looked long and hard at the life I've been given and inwardly screamed, "WHY??"

Why does the darkness always seem to be just half a step away from overtaking me?

I saw my husband, my girls, my home, and my mostly beautiful life.

But I also saw something else for the very first time.

I saw the baggage of a decade.

I saw how I donned it every day, like a worn out sweater.

How I carried it into conversations with my husband,

How it warped my view of motherhood.

I searched hard to find an area of my life that was unmarred by my past.

It didn't exist. 

The weight was holding me back. Dragging me down. Like the anchor to a ship.

I told Chad, "I'm so sick of looking at you, our marriage, and myself through the lens of the past. It's high time I give myself a fair chance."

And I cut the rope. I laid the burden down.

I cannot change a thing about yesterday. 

But yesterday does not get to define me. 

I can release the past but I cannot erase the past.

It's still there and always will be.

But its no longer the anchor to my ship.

Its the tail to my kite. 

It whips and twists in the wind.

Sometimes, it tries to steal the show.

But it doesn't keep me from flying free.