Back Where I Belong..

If you know me, you know I stopped writing. Just recently emerging for awareness days & little blurbs barely able to be considered quotable. If you know me, you know that not having written a full piece in about three years is gut wrenching to notate, but even more painful to acknowledge to myself. To be honest in the beginning it was easy. I couldn’t formulate the words that matched my emotions. Then I felt empty, so there was nothing there. Next, so much that i was burying it and busting at the seams all at once. It felt impossible to emulate the way I once conveyed my every thought & feeling, to be MRB again. If you know me you know I bleed in letters. My words are etched in red staining the pages forever; every piece I’ve ever written has been bound by an ounce of my soul. My writing could not lie if I tried. Writing to me is as important & vital as breathing is to live. But I stopped.
There came a point where I was at first encouraged to limit my writing, then lock it all up altogether. If I’m honest, I haven’t even taken my computer out once since I moved almost 8 months ago. That, is pain. It’s interesting now, knowing these last three years have been the most jam packed with trauma & hurt. Pain beyond measure. A writers dream. Not for me. We all know that when I am in deep sorrow I coil & disappear. So it makes sense that the biggest truths are still hidden deep inside.
In the last few years I’ve had the greatest losses. I lost my favorite person to enter this earth, I’m still thawing. I’ve had a state board investigation, I forget to acknowledge all the loss within this still to this day, not just the loss of my writing- which it encouraged my new writing to be a bit censored. So I stopped writing at all. Until I wrote two suicide notes a couple months later, intended to be the last pieces to exist. I survived. But the most I had written after was barely a poem- on paper with a crayon almost illegible in a psych ward because of the stitches & nerve damage. Fast forward through that aftermath- I am now in the middle of an investigation for a rape case. I needed to shut down my writing because my online presence is (was) strong, and I used my real name for all accounts, google would bring me up immediately, so lock it all down. I needed to not unintentionally give them anything they could potentially use against me in court. Fair? No, but we all know how those cases go. So I shut things down, edited privacy settings, deleted things altogether. You just never know what the defense will latch onto. Oh well, because I lost anyway & my rapist will go free for what he did to me forever. But I didn’t start writing again. I hadn’t even felt the magnitude of all these gigantic things that happened in such a short time span, so I decided to push it all aside, stop writing about my life & go live it. & I did. I created a new mantra of living in the exact moment I was in and only that. It worked, I was blissfully happy & in love. I wrote bits and pieces here and there about love & living & the magic of it all. But never a full piece. I never allowed myself to go there; to let the words bleed out of me again, running like water so effortlessly downstream. But that’s where I was headed. Downstream so to speak. In many ways I’ve bettered myself, my life, my life’s potential in the future. I poured my soul into work, got a dog, moved out. I was LIVING. but how can I really be living when I am not writing. I look at the screen and the MRB etched in ink on my hand forever reminded me why I placed it there. For this exact moment. I put MRB there as a reminder to never let anyone or anything stifle my passions, to shut down “MRB” that is me, the true me. I’ve done quite a bit of soul searching, tons of healing work, even more trauma work. My internal dialogue has shifted, it now belongs entirely to me. My progress in therapy since I’ve finally begun to feel again has been astronomical. Coolest part is that it’s been all me doing each step of the work. There’s no consequences, no second voice in my head, nobody else dictating HOW I get to heal & share my truth. God, liberating is an injustice to the feelings. It’s been my own fortitude that’s gotten me through. It’s been HARD. It’s been unbearable looking at wounds that some have been there now for quite some time but they all bleed as if they were created today. I’m not ready for these steps, though some pretty good therapists would say I am. However, I AM ready to breathe again. Nobody is going to cut off my airway again. No body will stifle my words, my truth, my expression. It’s been awhile, so hang in there while I regain my footing, as I have no clue where to start. But maybe that’s the magic, that it doesn’t matter. I owe nothing to any of you. My truth, my story, what I have been through. I understand that what I share is a gift as I choose to share it. Though in the same, I thank you all for walking along with me as I find my way. For allowing me to do so these last few years in my time and in messy ways as I navigate through. The best is truly yet to come, I have to believe. Because if I do not, there isn’t much worse I’ve yet to experience. I do NOT apologize in advance if you cross through the black printed words and if you don’t like what you read, my experiences are mine- though you wrote your story line yourself, I just am penning it. To the villains, the hero’s, the pivotal characters and the fleeting ones, it’s all our time to shine.
May the words bring whatever they are meant to, & may I continue to refuse to set expectations for them. Through the past, the current, the dreams of the future, are all being written right now, & I cannot wait to share them with you.
Welcome back, MRB.
You’ve been missed.

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