Reckonings

Ya, it’s a new thing for me, but I'm reckoning with things almost on a regular basis these days. In fact, I'm starting to feel when one is coming on. There’s like a rumbling inside of something trying to surface: something that has gone unaddressed—probably for a long time, and my new internal landscape is…welcoming.

I just got to the point where I didn’t want to carry around hidden gremlins inside me anymore. My body has been trying to expel them and causing me pain that I can’t ignore. It’s like a signal to check in and see what’s trying to get out.

It actually doesn’t require hours of quiet meditation to get to it. It could come in the middle of the night. (I've had some pretty intense ones when I've gotten out of bed to see where they go...) Now I know that once the rumble starts, if I just sit and ask “What’s up?” I usually get an immediate answer--sometimes so quickly that it almost whizzes by before I can register it.

Childhood stuff mostly. Which is fascinating to see from this perspective: so far from it in time and from the vantage point of an adult. I get impressed with tactics my little brain developed to get me through. I can hold it up and admire its simple sophistication and also start to see how it has fucked with me as I’ve held onto what a 3-year old thought was a good strategy to implement. And it’s taken this long to recognize a version of these tactics that I’ve been using this whole time! (Don’t worry, there will be examples.)

Reckonings about what was “normal” in my family that now I can recognize was not only not normal, but definitely not healthy. Reckonings around things I’ve done to myself or others. I’ve actually reached out to people who I haven’t talked to in decades and reckoned with them. 

Is there a time when the reckonings are done? Maybe it starts to balance out more and more with acceptance–acceptance of who I am, where I came from, and how I ended up here now. 

But the journey is still underway. The reckonings continue to arise.