The Day Of The Box

Boxing Day, by way of some intrinsic ritual, begins a period of reflection for me.

A harkening back.

I begin filtering the year just passed, shaking it through the sieve of my memory and allowing the outgrown and the ill-fitting to separate from the rest.

What remains - the jumbled feelings, hopes and aspirations that feel true and relevant to the woman who strides or stumbles, depending upon the year, from the narrowing hallway of the closing months - I sort into boxes.  Boxes full to the brim with my imaginings of what the coming year might be.  A collection of tentative ‘perhaps,’ ‘maybes,’ and ‘imagine thats!’

I remember my wins, the pieces of the year when fulfillment and pride dominated.

This year, I wrote a book. Began another. I travelled far from home and made memories on another continent. We hit a milestone in married years. I picked a path through the rocky crevices of menopause.

I recall those times that I walked in step with the truest version of myself. When I loved a beautiful wee soul with my whole heart…and then let him go. When I grieved. Fully. Felt every nuance because true love deserves that process. When I found joy despite it and because of it. When I made something beautiful with it. Despite how it cracked my heart wide open.

Yes, on Boxing Day I also consider my losses.

This year, there were many. Countless days that my heart felt bedraggled and frayed, a chaotic snarl of threads and seams.

We lost a brother. In a sudden split and sundering.

We said goodbye to our four legged friend. In a slow and agonizing struggle.

We sustained loss by choice: both our own and others’. The deliberate stepping back from struggles we could not influence, choices we did not make.

They hurt, nonetheless.

I've learned that growing often hurts. Like casting aside a layer of my skin that, though dear, has pulled too tight. Not matter that I decorated it painstakingly and with focused intention. No matter that it felt fabulous for a time. No matter that it reflected the light perfectly and it brought out the green of my eyes.

Eventually, it pinched and pulled. Eventually, it constricted my growing. Eventually, I had to let it spool onto the floor and step free from its folds.

Growing hurts.

Growing hurts and people disappoint us and we disappoint ourselves. Life veers in unexpected and unwanted directions.

Yet, I tell myself not to be afraid to shed the old. To breathe deeply into the scars. To release the gnarled hurts. Because if I do not, if I clench and pull into myself that which no longer serves, joy can't find room. I crowd out the goodness.

Instead, I tell myself, that I must make room for becoming. I tell myself to open space for new thoughts, sentiments to pull into the heart of me. To expand from my core out.

I tell myself that perhaps these untried things, the ideas and wonderings, the fresh and untouched, will coalesce, cleave. Craft a new skin to step into. To colour and wear however I choose.

Not that long ago, my boxes also housed instructions, directives to: lose this... quit that... achieve, do, complete. Those boxes were meant to shrink me, to cast me into unspoken competitions. Or they highlighted my lacks, like a tally of deficits or scores to settle.

Overtime, I set that cache of boxes adrift. So, what was once a vast array of boxes, an overwhelming muddle of agendas and plans, has shrunk in number.

I subscribe more to quality than quantity lately.

My boxes now, are labeled with words like Authenticity, Nature, Health. These are the ideas I wish to welcome into my life, make comfy in my rooms.

Ideas that I want to nestle into the heart of me, ideas that settle, that stay for tea.

These wishes don’t need fancy plans, itineraries, or agendas. They need a willing heart and room to meander about.

Open spaces to settle into, like tired feet into beloved slippers.