Circling Back

We think life is a straight line.

Birth to death.

With certain landmark moments and accomplishments that are expected to happen along the way.

Go to school and learn.

Grow up.

Become an adult.

Get a job. Make money.

Buy a car and a home.

Meet someone.

Fall in love. Have children. Create a family.

Live happily ever after until you retire.

But life isn’t a straight line, and none of these pivotal moments are guaranteed.

Some happen later than we expected.

Some don’t happen at all.

Some happen and then come undone.

We fall in love and fall out of it. We build families that don’t look anything like the ones we imagined. We start over. We move backward. We return home when we thought we were supposed to be moving forward.

And sometimes we look around and realize other people seem to have reached places we haven’t yet.

It is difficult not to interpret that as failure.

I’ve done that.

I’ve looked at my life and wondered why I hadn’t reached certain milestones yet. Why other people seemed to move through them so easily while I was still figuring things out.

I’ve called myself a late bloomer.

Sometimes affectionately.

Sometimes less so.

But I wonder now if there really is such a thing.

Late according to what?

Whose timeline was I following in the first place?

Because life isn’t a straight line.

Life, and so many parts of living, are cyclical.

Lessons we’re meant to learn come into our lives again and again. Sometimes lurking at the edges until we acknowledge them.

Sometimes crashing in as the universe says, It’s now or never.

Learning boundaries.

Self worth.

How to love without self sacrifice.

How to reclaim yourself.

How to receive.

Some of these lessons are hard to learn.

They come with pain and heartache.

I learned boundaries because I kept moving mine.

Because I could understand why someone behaved the way they did.

Because I could see the wound underneath the behavior.

Because I could empathize.

I confused understanding someone’s behavior with having to accept it.

I learned self worth in much the same way.

By sacrificing pieces of myself to be chosen.

Being understanding enough.

Forgiving enough.

Easy enough.

Helpful enough.

Afraid that if I asked for too much, expected too much, needed too much, I might miss my chance.

Only to be left anyway.

There is something particularly painful about realizing you abandoned yourself trying to keep someone else from abandoning you.

And then comes the return.

It doesn’t happen all at once. Actually, it’s painfully slow.

I’ve not dramatically reclaimed myself in one sweeping moment.

It has happened in pieces.

Remembering what I like.

Doing things simply because I want to do them.

Writing.

Traveling.

Trying something new.

Going somewhere alone.

Saying no without constructing an entire legal defense for why I’m allowed to say it.

Letting myself take up a little more space.

Calling pieces of myself home.

And just when I think I’ve learned a lesson, it comes around again.

Different person.

Different circumstances.

Different version of me.

There was a time when I might have seen that as evidence that I hadn’t learned it properly the first time.

Now I think that’s how growth works.

You don’t learn boundaries once.

You meet them again when the stakes change.

You don’t learn self worth once.

You practice it when something you desperately want asks you to abandon it.

You don’t reclaim yourself once.

You notice when you’ve wandered away and find your way back.

And then there is the lesson I think I’m still learning.

How to receive.

This one sounds like it should be easy.

Open your hands.

Let something good arrive.

But receiving is surprisingly uncomfortable when you’re accustomed to being the one who gives.

When someone helps me, part of me immediately wants to figure out how to repay them.

When someone is generous with me, I feel gratitude, but sometimes there is discomfort tucked underneath it.

What do I owe now?

How do I make this even?

How do I prove I deserved it?

I’m learning that receiving doesn’t require any of that.

Maybe it simply asks me to open my hands.

To let someone be kind.

To let someone help.

To let something good happen without immediately trying to earn it.

But open hands aren’t passive.

They don’t have to hold everything placed inside them.

I can receive something and decide whether it belongs in my life.

I can appreciate an offering without keeping it.

I can allow someone to show me who they are without rushing to make it mean something.

I can decide what gets to stay and what I release.

Perhaps that’s part of why this lesson had to come after the others for me.

Receiving without boundaries isn’t receptivity.

It’s just another way of abandoning yourself.

Even taking care of ourselves is a circle.

We need to tend to all of our parts.

Our health.

Our creativity.

Our work.

Our relationships.

Our friendships.

Our inner lives.

But I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking balance meant doing all of these things well at the same time.

I’m not sure that’s possible.

There are seasons when one part of us needs more.

There have been seasons when motherhood needed almost everything I had.

Seasons when survival did.

Seasons when work consumed more of me than I wanted it to.

Times when I stopped writing.

Times when I stopped taking care of my body.

Times when romantic love occupied far too much space.

And times when it occupied none at all.

Maybe balance isn’t keeping everything perfectly tended.

Maybe it’s noticing what we’ve neglected.

And circling back.

Returning to the body after living too long inside the mind.

Returning to creativity after becoming consumed by responsibility.

Returning to friendship after disappearing into love.

Returning to ourselves after spending too long focused on everyone else.

We tend one part.

Then another calls for us.

And we circle back.

Again.

And again.

Except maybe circle isn’t quite the right word.

Because a circle brings us back to exactly where we started.

And I don’t think we ever really return to the exact same place.

Maybe life is more like a spiral.

We encounter the same lessons.

The same fears.

The same questions.

The same tender places.

But each time we come around, we’re standing somewhere slightly different.

I can encounter the fear of not being chosen now and recognize it.

Oh. You again.

I know what happens when I let that fear make my decisions for me.

I know what it costs me.

And maybe this time I choose differently.

Not perfectly.

Just differently.

Maybe growth isn’t finally conquering every lesson and moving on to the next one.

Maybe there isn’t a final version of ourselves waiting somewhere at the end of the line.

Maybe we keep circling.

Learning.

Forgetting.

Remembering.

Tending.

Releasing.

Receiving.

Returning.

Each time a little closer to ourselves.

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ❤︎