Too many years in the time machine

The thing about waiting is that you can't just wait: You have to be waiting while in the process of doing (something else).

This is true of writing, and of living.
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Occasionally I look back through my archives here, look at who I was, where I was.  A reality check, a map-correction?  A reminder.  A time machine.

This, from a little over ten years ago:


"on the reading of not waving, but drowning"

tempest-toss'd
breath caught, choking, in iron-banded chest;
the waves take me under.
I am, quoth Stevie, not waving, but drowning.


and from another entry that same year, in conversation about a conversation between myself and my therapist:

He's of the opinion that I've been repressing anything that isn't deemed (by me) "good" and "helpful" and "socially acceptable to people whose good will I want" since I was fourteen. So we're going to be breaking down those barriers and seeing what comes up to play.

That was a miserable time in my life.  Looking hard at yourself, at the choices made and why those choices were made?  An emotional UFYH?  Bleah.

I'm not that person any more. I remember her, I feel empathy and sympathy for her, I don't know even now if she made the right decisions or not. But I'm not her any more.

It does get better. Sometimes it gets immeasurably worse, first, but it does get better.