I have formed a new routine. I have new likes and dislikes. I can sense that I am morphing into someone not too different from the old Arielle...but different enough.
Different is scary.
I don't want to feel foreign.
I look in the mirror and I still look like me. Then I see it, that difference in the eyes. I stand there and smile softly. Then bigger. Then like a maniac. I pretend to laugh just to see if the strangeness will leave my eyes. It doesn't.
Sometimes when I'm on the phone with different friends and it's a good conversation - a funny one - I flip the visor down as I drive my car and watch my face in the mirror to see if the authentic laughter and smiling takes that strangeness out of my eyes. It doesn't.
I sit at home, alone in bed, with a changing brain in my head. It's not that different. But it's different enough. I don't know how to feel. I don't know what to think. I don't know how to make sense of the stuff that's in there.
I take comfort in knowing that somewhere, deep in my heart, I'm still the same. The peach can grow. It can blossom. It can ripen. It can change color. It can rot. It can waste away. So many different changes can happen to it. But the pit is always the same. Deep in my heart, I know I'm the same. I cling to that when parts of me change. When I feel so different.
Not that different is bad... It's just...different.
When you live that kind of experience, you cannot remain the same you were before. You cannot avoid the change.
ReplyDeleteThink that "different" doesn't mean "better" or "worse", but only diverse. And when there's something different, it's where you can built something new...