untamed #2 - coming home to myself

{these are a series of posts i started writing mid-pandemic while reading “untamed” by glennon doyle and learning that she used to lock herself in a closet every morning before her kids got up to write and write and write and then she’d just post them without looking back}

i burned my entire life to the ground at 20 and started over. the prior 2 years were the darkest, most chaotic of my life, and i'd had a marvelous time ruining everything, in the words of miss taylor swift. so i took a plane from texas to vermont and moved home with my mom and 6-year-old sister for 7 months. i worked as a housekeeper at a swanky bed and breakfast, scrubbing toilets and changing bedsheets. i went to therapy 3 times a week, twice for one-on-one, and once for group. i tried to make sense of where i'd been and make room in my life for where i was going.

when i was trudging through hell, i'd somehow gotten the idea that what i needed was to start my life over in boston. maybe i had listened to that augustana one-hit-wonder too many times (i think i'll go to boston / i think i'll start a new life / i think i'll start over / where no one knows my name...), maybe i was just prepping to run again for the 4th time in the last year. my friend shannon (hi Shish!!) joked that i was a mouse and boston was the cheese. my life, my demons and my bad decisions and my wreckage, were the walls of the maze. and on a warm june day, after months and months of therapy and rebuilding, i packed my car with everything i owned and drove to boston to start over.

i stumbled my way into an office job. i met a man i really really really liked. i took a look at my life and my baggage and everything i was, and i decided that if i wanted to succeed, i had to truly burn it all down. it all had to go. i felt that i was healed and happy, and i thought that if i wanted to keep that, "shelbi" as a person, everything that made me who i was had to cease to exist. i'd convinced myself that being me was what had brought me all this pain in the first place. so after all this cleansing i'd done, i couldn't take the chance that the poison from the "old me" could leak into my new life.

i packed up bags and bags of my clothes -- my entire wardrobe of flowy dresses and favorite t-shirts -- and dropped them at goodwill. i bought a bunch of officewear. i took out my nose ring and let the hole close up. i gave away all my best bohemian jewelry and started wearing simple pearl studs. i whitewashed my entire life and personality so i could be something safe and passable. someone loveable. someone without a past or any friction. i put away my piano, my art supplies, my notebooks and let them collect dust. "artist" me was a dark me, and she could not be trusted.

that was a bit over a decade ago. i married that man i really really liked. we bought a house and a car together. we have a child together. i have textbook perfect and normal in-laws. my holidays are straight out of an LL Bean catalog. everything about my life is right and safe and average. and i love everything about it. i chased a life of normalcy and predictability for so long, and the relief of making it to one has been overwhelming, like arriving at the finish line of a triathlon. but an interesting thing has been happening as i feel safer: my walls are coming down and i miss who i used to be.

turning 30 felt especially like coming home. it felt like finally being given permission to be settled. but it also awoke a lionness in my heart, a goddamn cheetah as glennon would say, who is ravenous for truth and authenticity. it has become painful to keep all my interests and thoughts and feelings locked away in fear that they'll be too much for other people to handle.

i've started dabbling in music again. i taught myself ukulele and i've been arranging and harmonizing pieces. i've been writing music. writing words. painting. drawing. doodling. each day, i work a little bit on awaking parts of me i put deep to sleep long ago. it's painstaking and confusing and a little overwhelming at times. sometimes i'm ashamed to be still finding myself in my thirties, but at least i can say i'm still searching. at least i can say i haven't given up looking.

i had to kill everything in me to survive. but it's time to start cultivating this soil. it's time to start tending this garden. it's worth pruning the weeds when you're left with the flowers. it's worth the nurturing. maybe i will make a worthy garden afterall. maybe i don't have to be poured concrete to be loved.