Part three of this series pays tribute to real moments I lost stuck in the storm clouds of my own mind. My first attempt to find my way out of the cyclones, I realized the only way out was through. Through the hard and the ugly. I was going to therapy and facing things that I buried so very deep. I realized why I choose to bury these things, because facing them made me feel like moving through mucky water. I was drowning for so long I didn’t realize that I had to get through the muck to the clear water and moving through this felt slow, painful, and raw like I was an open wound.

In the process, my emotions reached new levels of intensity in such a short span that my nervous system decided it was enough. My body went into emotional shutdown and I couldn’t feel sadness, happiness, or any emotion. I felt so overwhelmingly numb it was disorienting. My emotional rollercoaster was staled and I felt like I was stuck mid ride. But just like a staled rollercoaster, eventually the ride goes on. As much as I hated that back and forth of feeling so much to feeling nothing at all, it felt so freeing to finally just float again. They don’t call it doin’ the work for nothing, right? It is really fucking hard to face your own shit and before it gets better sometimes it gets worse but the point is that it does get better.

And so with this step through the muck to the clear water, I built the new frame to my new internal home. Sometimes the biggest steps are just not sliding backwards anymore.