Forward

One last step.

One more lesson to learn.

One more fear to conquer before the new year.

This past year has been one of immense self growth, discovery, and care. It’s been a year of stripping away built up insecurities and buried fears, and tearing down walls erected around my heart.

Except, vulnerability.

That word has been tossing around in my head and creating a knot in my chest the past few weeks. I’ve tried to ignore it, but here I am at my rawest self, starring into the core of my deepest anxieties.

I can’t really pin point when, but somewhere a long the way I barricaded myself against disappointment. I decided I had had enough heartbreak to last me a life time, and I couldn’t and wouldn’t take anymore. So I unconsciously set a limit of how close I would let anyone get to me, telling myself it was safer this way. I wouldn’t disappoint anyone else, and no one would disappoint me. Thus avoiding heartbreak altogether.

It was foolproof. And I was content. Until now.

Now I’m finally facing my hidden bundle of molten resentment and pain, unconsciously stoked with pent up grudges, bitterness from arguments unresolved with no apologies, fragmented heartache that never got closure, mixed in with shame that I didn’t know how to forgive, forget and move on. And fear. Overwhelming fear that if people really knew what was inside me, they wouldn’t understand, they wouldn’t listen, they wouldn’t love me.

Exhale. Vulnerability.

What I feared the most is ironically what set me free. Once I stopped running from my deepest anxieties and mustered the shaky courage to admitted them out loud, they held no power over me. I realized my desire for moving forward was stronger than my dependency on avoidance. Old wounds, old grudges, old arguments belong in the past and that is where I finally left them.

With the dawn of the new year, the knot in my chest has unfurled into relief and peace as I look forward. So forward I go.

Sarah Lorna