Relevance II

I'm revisiting a lot of my older work. Collages, writing samples, journal entries, deep sad diary entries. I am proud. I am sad and angry at my own innocence and arrogance. I am enthralled with myself. I am shocked by the fragility and vulnerability that I approached things with. The way I approached life, relationships, my emotions, my ambitions, my inhibitions. It is a side of myself I don't think I see as much anymore. It's certainly a side of myself I try to limit the public from seeing. Gone are the days that I am so willing to bare open my chest, to flaunt the rawness of everything.

I'm not sure if I should be sad or happy or content or nothing about the way I am no longer her. I am not the same innocent, raw, vulnerable, unsuspecting girl I once was. Is this because I grew up? Do I still encounter things the same way I once did? Did I stop feeling along the way?

A thought that occurs to me time and time again: if I met the people I once fell in love with now, will we still fall in love? Will we still have the same interactions? Will the interactions be better? More intimate? More sustainable with more communication and respect? Will they exist at all? Will I still want these relationships to happen at all? Will they like the person I am today? Will I be less fearful in the way I encountered these relationships, these people? I often wonder.

In a yoga class not so long ago, the teacher says it is important to get rid of old patterns. To dig and confront the patterns - the bad, the ugly patterns. To build something new. To challenge where we otherwise may not.

I am digging through my past. The collages are a big part of that.

I hope I work through things soon. There's a lot of work to do. I hope you enjoy the collages. I hope you can still feel some of the emotion from some of my past. I hope she resonates with you in some way. I think she still does to me a bit.