Is she gone — the wild girl I was before?

This time, I felt grief and let it flow before I could intellectualize it and avoid the whole messy bit of actually experiencing the feels.

The sky is such a dark, heavy gray you’d never know it was only 9am.

It’s pouring outside and three years ago, I would have jumped out of bed and ran outside to dance in this rain without a bra (or possibly even pants), without a care about soaking my hair, eager to embrace the cold. I’d laugh and look up at the sky, I’d note how it felt as droplets touched my lips, giggle when they went right down my shirt, and laugh some more as I soaked the floor coming back inside. Shivering with an open smile, I’d delight in a hot shower and cup of tea to warm back up…

Things are different now. I am different.

Regret threatens to breathe life into a much colder side of me.

An ever-present voice in my head murmurs resentfully that thinking sadly about how I’ve changed and what I’ve lost is another way of living out a “victim mentality.” It says I have to stop that.

“Victim mentality” is a phrase I heard in a video online a couple weeks ago that really struck a chord. It hurt in a way that I knew meant there was something to it. The disgust it ignited inspired me to think about how I might view and portray myself as a victim, how that might benefit me (if I’m brutally honest with myself), where and why I might have picked it up in the first place, what it might look like to release that “mentality,” what I might replace it with, and why that might be something I want to do…

That might all be true, and I know the thought will still be there when I want to come back to it, so for right now, I recognize that I am shaming myself as a distraction from the pain in my heart as I watch the falling rain and recoil… and I decide to put thoughts of “victim mentality” aside and be with this moment instead.

I miss the girl I was.

For this moment, I hug myself tightly and I say: “I feel grief because I miss the version of me who would go out and dance in that rain. I feel sad because I am aware of the heaviness in my heart, mind, and body today. I feel afraid that the parts of me that are wild and brave and joyous might not come back, and that fear seems very big.”

I promise myself there will be no judgment for this moment… and I go on and feel it. I try to soothe myself with tapping, but I find it jarring, annoying, frustrating… so instead, I wrap a fuzzy blanket around my shoulders, stand in front of the heater, facing the rain out the window, and I squeeze my shoulders lovingly, reassuringly, and I cry.

The tears don’t last as long as I expect.

The grief and sadness and fear well up so big, and with every squeeze, they disippate. I feel loved, I feel safe.

I cry harder, realizing that I just soothed myself and gave myself the love and comfort I needed (in a state of mind where in the past, I might have waited for someone else to do it, panicked, or spiraled to a much darker place).

There’s something there, hidden by the grief.

As the tears flow, the emotional swelling subsides and I notice something in the space left behind: quiet hope. Gentle hope. I see the part of me who loves the rain, who will jump in the coldest water and make snow angels in her birthday suit… and I realize she’s still right here with me, but this is a different season of life in this body, and right now the element that speaks to me isn’t water. It’s fire. It’s warmth.

Dryness, which I’ve always hated, has become a beacon to me lately. Stories about deserts and dragons, my persisting dream of having the skill to sing and play guitar by the campfire this summer (and the hours of practice, blisters, and callouses I’ve put into it for six months now)… I’ve found myself wondering about the one landscape of the world I never had much interest in exploring.

I don’t make plans to go anywhere or do anything about it just yet.

I am begging life not to take turns which will force me out into the cold and rain, but I’m not ready to leave behind the rainforest and waves of the Oregon coast, either. The grief has swelled up and poured out of me, but I’m not as resilient as I once was (or perhaps I am still resilient, but also more aware of my needs in the moment and more mature in the regulation of my emotions — less apt to stuff it all away and create chaos by forcing myself into storms for no reason other than to be able to say I did it).

Today, I will not dance in the rain… and I will not head for the desert.

But I will sit by the window with a cup of tea and I will light a candle, and I will rest with myself somewhere in between a desert campfire and the damp rainforest. I will embrace the middle, I will be where I am, I will reduce my own resistance and allow myself to settle into the chair that holds me.

I think about that phrase again, “victim mentality.”

It makes my face sour. Next week, I begin self-defense classes. I go to therapy, like always. I continue to work toward my goals. But today, I will sit with the rain and the tiny flame and I declare: this is enough. I am doing enough. I am enough.