It was almost automatic. I’d get up, search hastily through my ever growing pile of notebooks and stationary to find the hardback copy with the pretty colourful flowers on the front, and then set to work, usually over breakfast, in writing down my weekly goals.
The months passed and changed, and I changed, too. And now so much is different from before, there are a few things that remained unchanged and static.
ED’s actual presence is one of these. It’s true that his presence in my life is not as perceptible, as manifest, or as patent as before. Sometimes I even forget he is there; in times when excitement or joy, or simply hard work transport my mind to an unfamiliar place which ED cannot touch. But then he gently reminds me again with a cold hand on my shoulder or an insidious whisper in my ear. He’s like the that thorn in your side which you can’t quite prise out; that fly above your head which you keep on swatting at but can not quite shake off from your back. A thing that doesn’t do enough to cause you any danger, but is there, nonetheless, and is enough to make a smile disintegrate into a frown. He is like my second shadow, in a way. Though I run and feel free at times, I look round and I can still see him attached to me, casting a space of darkness upon just some of the ground upon which I tread.
Impossible. Impossible so it may seem to detach yourself from something which for so long has been so intrinsically part of you, just like a shadow. Through darkness and light, through ED has been there, for every step of the way. And it almost seems like he had become part of me.
Not so, of course. The past two years have been critical for me, in the sense that I have finally begun to develop a sense of who I really am. Not the sick Emmy. The real Emmy who wants to live.
Im different from the rest, perhaps, but I’m no longer ashamed to say it. I don’t drink, I don’t wear ounces of make up or use snapchat or twitter, I don’t choose to wear the clothes which might make me fit in a little bit better amongst the other members of my society. But I don’t feel bad about this anymore. Im learning to accept, perhaps even embrace, my differences. And I can say that for my body, too.
Though I know I’ve got a much longer way to go, yet.
I’ve still got a bit to go along this long winding road.
And, contrary to my former beliefs, I know now that if I walk faster and stronger, I can leave that shadow far behind me. Detach myself from it, like a butterfly breaking free from the spider’s entrapping web.
I landed there long ago, in that web of the intricate fine lines fringed with minuscule droplets of shimmering pearl and glistening silver. A thing so beautiful to the eyes of the innocent, but which, to those who know better, has long been the lair of a bloodthirsty creature; a creature which feeds off the bodies of its victims while they still remain torturously, tormentingly alive.
And back then, it was the more attractive fate for me, to be wrapped in the stifling layers of darkness and no feeling. To feel my body slowly be drained of its lifeblood, leaving nothing but an empty shell behind.
But now, for no longer. I want to free myself and learn to fly again, and spread my strong new wings.
And I believe this is where goal setting comes in again. For this, and so many other reasons.
And with this in mind I will use my next post to explore these reasons, and what goals I plan to put in place which will finally enable me to fly free. And to teach me how for the next time, I need not land back in the spider’s web; But to alight, like a feather drifting softly to the earth, in the midst of the meadow of bright and shimmering flowers.
