I’m an overthinker. Always have been. Likely always will be. At the current moment, I’m sitting alone on a balcony in the Outer Banks while the rest of my family (brothers, sisters, daughters, nephews) all hang out by the pool. It’s windy and I’m in a sweatshirt and leggings while the rest sun themselves, apparently immune to the breeze and temp. 

I’m digging my way through Suzanne Collins’ new Hunger Games book, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. If you’ve read the previous books or seen the movies, you’re familiar with Snow. This is Snow as a teenager and his flaws and faults are taking root, borne of his upbringing and likely his inherited personality.

Maybe it was the ten hour drive through the night on the way here or the crippling lack of sleep, but both yesterday and now today my mind has been being drawn to my own faults, flaws, and failings. It’s a blessing and a curse to be an overthinker. Sometimes I certainly complicate matters, my life … but other times I think it allows me to appreciate things and to grow in ways I might not, otherwise.

That’s paramount to me, personal growth. I’m so easily frustrated by people who show no insight or interest in their behavior and lack the motivation for self-improvement.  Don’t get me wrong. I have a long, long way to go, but at least I try? Even in my very flawed way, I try.

So I’ve been back on dating sites, recently, and had a couple of good dates with a dude. My brother is divorced; my sister is divorced but in a committed relationship; my other brother is happily married. I’ve been divorced now for ten plus years and free of a serious relationship for three. I’ve only pretty recently come to terms with the fact that I’d like a “real” relationship. Looking back on on my seven-year, post-divorce relationship with the narcissist, it’s becoming clear to me that that relationship lasted as long as it did because I placed a fairly high value on the arms-length nature of that connection. There was never a discussion of living together–in fact, that thought was rather horrifying to me. At the time, I explained it away because the girls both lived at home, and it would be such an upheaval; in retrospect, they were the excuse. I had no interest in entering into that type of a relationship after exiting a marriage in which I was entirely too dependent on another human being. Hindsight tells me that seven year relationship makes perfect sense, then–the illusion of closeness with none of the risk. 

But lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps I’m willing to take that risk. The girls are getting older; I’ll graduate next February with my NP and be more financially stable than I’ve even been; I’m three years removed from my last significant romantic relationship.  I’m feeling a pull for something deeper …. And yet I struggle to make it past a first date. If you ask friends or family, I’m a “great catch” … and as I type that, I realize that what the heck else are they going to say to my face? That I`m a hot mess? (Well, my sibs would definitely say that to me!) But I think I’m pretty okay.  Funny, fairly smart, passionate. So then where’s the disconnect? What’s the problem? I see people go from serious relationship to serious relationship and yet I struggle to make it past a few dates. 

And so my mind goes to Snow and his flaws borne in his childhood. I’m not far into the book so I don’t know how it plays out for him, but I’m suddenly very struck with my own role in my own life.

God, it sounds so moronic, doesn’t it? Of course I have a role in my life … but I think maybe because things have been so hard for so long (single parenting with limited finances was difficult for me–took most of my energy) that I’m starting to realize how long I’ve been in pure survival mode, just getting by, just making it through. I recently started decorating–really, legitimately decorating–my condo, and it occurs to me that this is the first time since my divorce that I’ve done that–precisely because I’ve lacked the energy or motivation to do so before. When you constantly feel like you’re drowning, you don’t care too much what your surroundings look like because you’re so focused on just keeping your head above the water.

My head is above the water, now, and I’m looking around–and looking in. What is it about me that has landed me where I’m at today?  

I’m not sure that I have any definitive answers right now but I do see patterns that have been in play. Losing a parent when you’re young wrecks trust. At least it did for me. Nothing feels stable, the sand is constantly shifting underneath your feet. Couple that with a difficult marriage, the loss of my sister, the loss of my brother, my eventual divorce, and likely just a large part of my natural personality … and I think I’ve been afraid for a very long time. I lost myself in my first marriage and was petrified of doing that again so I ended up in a superficial relationship for seven years. The ending of that gutted my trust because I’d never experienced the level of deceit that I endured from him. That relationship and its aftermath is a lot to wrangle: I wonder how I couldn’ve been so stupid and so blind and so tolerant for so long. And now, today, how do I find the balance, the gray area? How do I trust but not blindly? How do I love but not to a fault? Why have I not been capable of those things before now?

I like who I am.  I genuinely–for the most part–like who I am. But it’s time to take a hard look at that girl and her habits. What personality flaws have I let run rampant for years that have landed me where I am today? How do I identify those traits? How do I blend the good part of me with the jaded, scarred, and frightened part of me? How do I live in a trusting but aware state of mind? 

It’s an interesting time in my life, to be sure. Kind of like my own renaissance … this is the time of my reawakening. 

“And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won’t be the end of things, only a way of being born again, a bathing and a slumbering where the old and the withered sink down, where the young and new begin to breathe. Then, with other thoughts, I will walk along streets like these, and listen to streams, and overhear what the sky says in the evening, over and over and over.” ― Hermann Hesse