Back to Me

Perhaps I should blame it on reaching 35, but recently I’ve found myself thinking a lot about our individual essence, our core: what makes you you, what makes me me; where that begins, where it resides; how it becomes, how it evolves. While often my philosophical questions are rhetorical in form, I let this specific thought flow through me this week, writing itself in fragments in my journal as I kept coming back to the same question: am I whom I’ve always been?

In high school, I had a boy (whom I was friends with and admittedly really liked) tell me – in reference to my trademark idealistic outlook – that I should get over my cheesy tendencies. I don’t recall the specifics of the exchange but assume I had fessed up my feelings to him in some manner, to which he so thoughtfully replied, “You’re not @mandymoore, Val, and your life isn’t one of her movies.” He was right; I wasn’t Mandy (though I still wish to be besties with her someday), and my life was far from a love story, but I’d be damned if I didn’t envelop myself with optimism and hope and faith in the beauty of the world.

I’ve acquired many bumps and bruises since that exchange nearly 20 years ago, but looking back, I wonder how battered I’d feel if I didn’t have that starry-eyed outlook to carry me through some of my darkest moments since. Something I’ve learned first-hand and ardently believe is that darkness need not swallow up light. Being lighthearted and smiley and hopeful doesn’t mean you don’t have the grit to withstand the very opposite of that. If dreaming makes me soft, then dare to test my will.

By sheer serendipity, yesterday I received a call from my high school English teacher, Mrs. Weyhe. She’ll be 80 next week, and I haven’t seen her since 2003, though we have spoken a handful of times over the years. She had spent the day cleaning out some files and stumbled upon a University of Florida postcard I’d mailed her during my first semester of college. Scribbled on the postcard was my number, so she took the chance to dial it with hopes of hearing a familiar voice on the other line. Imagine my surprise when I picked up and heard a “Hellloooo” in her characteristically lovely tone. We laughed and squealed for a moment, and she then promptly asked if she could read me this special note she had found, which had made her day (and now, mine). I listened attentively as she read a message from me, written all those years ago…

I wrote her those words just months before falling in love for the first time, years before my first heartbreak, a decade before encountering loss, and yet, as she read my note, I recognized myself. In those words, there I was. Me, the me I know today. As we talked for the next half hour, I delighted in her stories of me, the then-me and my then-writing in her classes, the gestures and the thinking that I didn’t realize made me any quirkier than any other 16-year-old peer. And yet, they did, because they were mine, mine to cultivate and to evolve and to take with me wherever I’d go from there.

So, here I am, finding myself bringing this week’s thinking full-circle as I reconnect with myself. Am I whom I’ve always been? Maybe. In some way, on some level, at our core, we all just might be. And whoever you are, how lovely to take some time explore her/him from time to time, to reconnect with that person, to ask them questions, to explore their mind and their heart for a bit. I encourage you to do that sometime. For now, my exploration turned into something very Val-like, thoughts strewn in the form of a poem of sorts.

* * *

I am rooted, winged, determined.
My hair has been tangled by stardust, 
from dreams – carried, fulfilled and left behind.

I was born of the earth of gauchos,
of song and warmth,
raised in the sunshine, stilled by the ocean,
brushed by fire, bruised not battered.

My wounds, now scars, carry stories,
still untold, begging to be written,
to be shared, to connect.

I collect myself by the sand,
drenched in sunset, I can see:
light so much light.
Darkness lasts but a while.

I emerge, time and time and time again
here, like me but lighter,
like me but stronger.

Heart wide open, a starry gaze.
If dreaming makes me soft, then
dare to test my will.

My hands, feminine, carry with them power
to change, challenge, create.

By way of this pen, I arrive,
here, every time:
back to me.