I realized perhaps today, perhaps yesterday, that I am no longer in survival mode. I have spent the past three months able to leave work at work and stay at 40 hours a week. I no longer work on the weekends. I no longer put hundreds of miles on my car in a month. I have the ability to drive to and from work with my husband and on occasion take lunch and eat together. The skills and strategies I learned to keep up with the grueling grind of my previous environment has allowed me now to breathe.

The lack of hustle between sites that spanned mountains, rivers, and communities, has given way to a territory I have not had to navigate in some time. I have the luxury to focus on one main elementary school. I do support other programs and preschools, but my time is clearly skewed in one place. With this biased time means I am very present.

Visible.

It is…

…off putting.

I do not like it.

It is uncomfortable.

I did not realize how much I enjoyed fliting in and out of places. I enjoyed it as I was unknown. Now…well…it is much harder to remain obscure. Even more poignant is the fact that I share a work space with counselors. I feel like my invisibility potion has worn off and every part of me is on blast. It has been a very….very….long time since I have been around others who are as observant in similar ways as I am. My typically described exterior of “calm” is now easily countered by the pronouncement of my emotions that I am used to masking more effectively. This new environment is forcing me to reflect back upon myself in a way I did not realize I yet needed too.

As I said, I am no longer in survival mode. However, my reactions and responses still manifest in the drop and go world I was in. The world where I had very little time to make a decision, address an issue, or counter a problem, is no longer the world I live in. The cut and run pace is replaced with the steady thrum of energy of one community. I am realizing that I am still going too fast. I could slow down. Though slowing down means I have to catch up with myself, as if my body is standing still and somehow I am looking back at myself wondering what had happened.

I have Evolved. Mutated. Transmuted. It happened without me recognizing it nor realizing how attached those changes became. When did my thoughts become harsher of the world around me? When did I start to speak more quickly and loudly? Ore speak at all? When did the foggy grayed acceptance of the other start to shift into black and white tones? When did the cracks in the earth become more pronounced between entities…and when did it become alright that those rifts were there?

The question has become, do I like what I see? The concept of self love has shifted much more internal then spa days or the memed words of affirmation. It has shifted to peering into the dark recesses that allows the brighter areas to pop. The places that must exist for other things to glow.

Have I already reached the stage of acceptance? Granted, I was never a linear person…far too…one way.

Acceptance…

Now where is the fun in that?