Puzzle Pieces & Chaos

Hi. If you don’t know me well, my name is Leah and I’m a writer. I’ve been using this form of self expression since before I could remember — I can trace it all the way back to middle school. I remember sitting in my pink room on my very pink bed typing on an even pinker Dell laptop, convinced I could write a novel about my middle school drama…and then having an ethical dilemma about releasing that major gossip bomb and deleting all my drafts.

When I moved from Long Island, New York to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, my old pink Dell laptop got disassembled and sold for parts. Until a couple months ago, I had completely forgotten about my dream of becoming a widely recognized author & writer.

A few months before that, my best friend had triggered the memory and neither of us even knew it. I had this really vague idea that I should start blogging, and then I had this other cool idea that I could sell my art too. I kept flip-flopping between these two passions, and a bunch of other far off dreams I had based off of a couple skills I’d picked up over the years. None of it seemed to make any cohesive sense, or fit together at all. It wasn’t until a brainstorm phone call in the car with her had sent me into this downward spiral of existentialism and imposter syndrome and fear of being seen and ultimately, the fear of rejection that I really started to sit with the potential of my future. She said to me, “You love kids, you love to paint, and you love to write — Why don’t you become a children’s book author and illustrator?”and oh my god did I freak out.

She saw it unfold in real time. I was grasping at straws to serve her any kind of excuse I could whip up. The dread set in, and the doubt & fear seeped through my mind like this sticky, black tar, poisonous, goopy mess — like the kind that would definitely stain your clothes in an irreversible and incredibly frustrating sort of way. The kind of feeling that’s like, of all dark clothes you own, you just had to wear white that day.

I said that just didn’t make sense and I couldn’t imagine having a label like that for forever. Like if all I ever was was an author, I don’t know that I’d be fully satisfied with my life. If all I ever was was a wife, I don’t know that that’d be enough for me either. It’s the age-old panic that women have been unwillfully experiencing for decades, maybe even centuries- “Can I have it all?” Was I going to be the kind of woman that could be a wife and a mother, yet still be able to give everything for her career? If I wanted a family, would that stop me from reaching my full potential in my career and public image? If I put everything I had into my career would I have anything left for my family? Or worse, would I look around some day and realize it’s too late to start one? Would I end up dying alone with no one to love or care for me? Now I have 15 cats and no kids and no husband and none of my books sold and I am a burnout recluse and I live in a small town in the Midwest and I’m formally known as the town loon………

Deep breathing exercises help me relax. Inhale, 1…2…3…4…5…6… Hold, 1…2…3…4… Exhale, 1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8… Rinse and repeat. I tapped on my chest and pulled on my ears. ( a nervous system reset trick I’d seen online. Hate when those work.)

“Get out of your head,” I hear repeating inside my overactive brain by the voices of everyone who’s ever known me. I hear my mom. I hear my best friend. I hear my high school best friend. I hear my ex. I hear that one boy I knew for a week or two. I hear strangers.

I can start to feel the stares on me now.

I had a nightmare about potato chips last night. I was stranded on an island and they were my only food but my subconscious had animated them to life and I couldn’t stomach the thought of eating them…they had a family and everything. I watched their plotline play out. Their ship crashed, the brothers were fighting, the mother was on the brink of death, the father was frantic — I ate sand instead.

Does it ever start to make sense?

I have pieces from opposite ends of a puzzle and I have not the slightest clue what the final picture is meant to look like.

My therapist tells me to just keep collecting the pieces and putting them together or putting them aside until they can fit.

I have a pile of middle pieces. And they’re all green. But also somehow none of them are grass. And they don’t fit each other either. I just keep pulling green pieces that never click into place — why is that?

What in God’s name am I supposed to be learning right now and how on that same God’s green earth have I not finished the damn lesson?

[I shouldn’t use “God” and “damn” in the same sentence, probably, but I digress.]

How much more time? How much more effort? How much more devotion is required of me? Make it tangible. Make it measurable. Seeing is believing, isn’t it?

My 8th grade teacher used to tell us all, “patience is a virtue” — so, am I willing to wait for the things I want? Am I willing to be determined? Am I willing to have faith in the unforeseeable future? Am I willing to believe in some higher power and their willingness to take care of the rest of my plan? But am I willing to do my part in that very same plan?

“Take action”

That’s what this astrologer in a crystal shop told me I came to this earth to do. Supposedly, I was meant to move away from my reflective nature in this lifetime.

If you’re confused by all this, I promise you I am too. The thing is though, I’m learning to be comfortable in my confusion. In a way it’s weirdly poetic, and honestly, beautifully tragic…like anything in your early 20s is.

Okay, I admittedly don’t have all the pieces to my puzzle, and no, I have zero idea what the puzzle is going to be or what it will look like, but I think that’s half the fun. I don’t want to know. I want to figure it all out as I go, so if that’s where you are too, then welcome to my blog. Stay a while and watch me figure life out, or figure it out with me. None of it is going to make sense, and honestly, that’s exactly how I like it. Welcome, and thank you for reading. More to come…

-Leah

@obli.viousbeauty