Awesome Disabled

(3 minute read)

This has been a summer of coming and going; although I’ve spent most of it at home, but I’ve also been out and about. Every time I leave, I feel like I return as a new person. It’s kind of like that old saying you can’t step in the same river twice, because the river changes as it flows and you change as you go. Going away from your home base is a bit ungrounding, especially for sensitive systems like mine.

I’ve also been forced to leave my home base in a couple of other domains too. I have experienced some job volatility that I wasn’t expecting, and this has made the summer more difficult to feel at home in my own skin and rooted in myself. In addition, I experienced a breakup recently. While singleness is a welcome change in my life, it’s still a huge adjustment. Dating as a single parent means that everything happens in real time. Even if I’m nursing a seriously broken heart, I gotta show up for my kids. Like that time I got broken up with on New Year’s Eve, then blocked. That was fun. But I had to slap on my party face and light sparklers with kids and make our New Year’s wishes. It takes a lot longer to process things when you can only be sad after your kids are in bed, and it’s the risk we take when we open ourselves up as parents. But I digress.

So I’m a bit of a nomad on a lot of fronts right now. I call it being a child of the universe, because calling it being a feral raccoon shitting itself in the corner is a lot less empowering, even if that’s what it feels like.

Last week, I was running an errand in my car, and I heard this song on the radio. It felt like my kinda vibe, and there’s a cowbell-sounding thing, which is a bonus.

“I’ve finally come around,

Dancing on my own ground again.

All that I lost I found,

Dancing on my own ground again.”

I like the idea of having “my own ground”– it feels rooted, and connected. And I like the idea of dancing on my ground. Dancing means a spirit of confidence, of comfort with where you are. I admit that this has been difficult for me; I rarely feel comfortable where I am, no matter where I am. But I’m getting there. I can start feeling like I have my own ground to return to, mentally and spiritually.

And “all that I lost I found”– things can be lost temporarily, but we come around. Self-confidence, identity, joy, a feeling of comfort. They get lost, and they get found. I have lost a lot in the recent shakeups, but I know I’m gonna find them again soon.

I know I have a place in this world, and it will become clearer to me where that is. I will be able to stake out “my own ground,” and, in time, I’m sure I’ll be able to start dancing again.