First, let’s paint the picture…five girls sitting around the dinner table, friends for over 20 years. It had been about five months since we last all got together so of course the mama bear of the group asked the question to all of us – “so what’s new with you”. I purposely moved by position to look at each of them one by one and let them answer while still drinking and hoping one of their stories was so good that it would take over the conversation for the night, and it did.

Now had that not happened and I had to answer the question, I knew what I would say because I practiced it while I drove to the restaurant and also while the other girls were answering. My answer was going to be “nothing much you know, same old same – work, sleep, mom and repeat”; but what I should say is “nothing new at all, I am stuck in the same rut for the 3rd year and it’s not okay and I need help to get out of it”. But I put the coward hat on, yet again. Yup, I called myself a coward – that’s self awareness, isn’t it? Do I get points for that at least? Serious though – I’m a coward because I am not being truthful; I am not telling them I have changed. Instead I am turning on my switch, putting on mask and going back to the old happy, go lucky, nothing can stress me persona – when that is so far from the truth.

Trauma doesn’t just disappear and now I understand that it could change a person; there are parts of me that have expired. I know, maybe that is not a bad thing – maybe I’ll evolve and shit and turn into a even better person, but for now, I don’t like it. I want go back to being the woman that went into a conversation genuinely interested in understanding the other person, the woman that just was happy waking up every morning, living each day to the fullest day by day.

Instead, the new me is waiting until I can go home and take a shower and lay in bed – get sucked into hours of Netflix or reading a book. It takes work and I’m not ready for that – call it cowardly, that’s fine. I called myself that earlier, remember. I am not ready to work on something because you know what, it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that I was changed – it wasn’t my choice.

xx, JC