It's been about seven years since I blogged regularly, I think. New posts aren't going to have a lot of context unless I fill in some of the gap between then and now.
Some things have changed, some of them drastically; some things have remained much the same.
I have gray hairs now, glistening at my temples, worked in shining threads throughout the many-shaded, gold-edged brown of my hair. I let them be; I like them. When I attended the First Baptist Church of North East as a teenager, I always admired the hair of a woman who sat with her husband several pews ahead of us -- she never dyed it, and the gray and silver mixed beautifully with the range of natural brown. I always hoped I would go gray that way, and I'm still waiting to see if I will.
I give less of a shit what strangers and bare acquaintances think of me. That might not appear to diverge much from my younger self on the surface, but it feels more secure and less defiant than it used to; Meg and I agree that something magical happens after turning thirty, where you feel freer to shed all your fucks and do what you want. So I dress as I please (having developed, since my last serious blogging days, a fairly fantastic sense of style all my own); I wear my hair in a ponytail and wash it once a week because I couldn't care less about fussing with it (and it's curlier now); I speak my mind frankly, with varying degrees of courtesy depending on the occasion; I stay home when I want to stay home; I go out when I want to go out; I don't apologize for feeling "peopled out" and wanting only the company of my beloved Simon (who is now fourteen and just as frisky and affectionate and grumpy as he ever was).
Where then I read entirely fiction and poetry, now I read almost entirely nonfiction, having developed a ravening hunger for the facts, the knowledge, the information denied me from my earliest childhood. Where I then listened to indie folk and indie rock, I now mostly listen to instrumental jazz (heavy on bebop) -- an exploration completely my own. In 2008 I moved from Michigan back to Pennsylvania; in 2015 I moved from Pennsylvania back to Michigan (full circle and a half).
I have better boundaries now, a stronger sense of self. Often I have won them at great cost.
Back then I struggled under the weight of depression; I have since learned to manage it. I walked through the valley of the shadow of death to get there, and feared, and faced, and relived much evil, and I learned to comfort me. Now the occasional rough patch is milder, and I have learned to listen to what my condition is trying to tell me when the ground swells rise more than they ought. The listening has led me out of some deep darknesses into light of my own making, and some of that very recently.
My life is quieter now, less ambitious. I feel no burden to change the world, although I would like to make a meaningful contribution, to leave the world a little better than I found it--I still haven't determined how. In the meantime I take pleasure in my work and leisure; I have a job that I like--I am still a legal secretary (after a brief and loathed recent stint teaching high school), much better paid now, and loving work at a large city firm which offers a brisker pace and greater challenges--and I satisfy my brain in other ways while I work out how to satisfy my soul...
...a word that I now use in metaphor. Once I counted myself a Christian; now I don't. My journey out of faith was long and strange and wonderful, and I have never encountered such fullness, such miraculous satisfaction, such shattering, transformative joy, as I have on the other side of belief. My deconversion is a story of love and liberation that I am still learning to live in.
I am still profoundly lonely. In the last seven years I have entered into two serious relationships; neither worked out. I ended the last one two months ago. It was necessary; it was wonderful, if sad, to break free; I have become again the self I recognize, happy, whole, complete and sure in myself, and, hopefully, a little surer, a little wiser, a little more shrewd for the latest experience. I have deeply loved only once, a long time ago, before either of the last two relationships. I never had the chance to tell him, and evidently not sharing my regard, he married someone else. I have never met his equal since, and I'm not sure how likely it is that I will. I hold out some hope, while resolving, without condition, to be fulfilled with my own company until such time, if ever, as I do.
So there you have it--the comparison in a nutshell. I remain (as Lizzie Bennett might say) much the same in essentials, although some essential things have changed, and for the better. Every year I find life a little richer; every failure, setback, disappointment, shows me my way a little more clearly.
I am, ever, Sarah.
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