Pilot Light

During the Summer, I didn’t get to spend much time processing life and recovering from all the major life changes over the past year.  From my separation to moving out to a new place during the first month of Covid lockdown, life was just super crazy.  Everything seems like a blur, as that's how my brain chooses to protect itself from trauma.  I don’t know how I managed to work a full-time job, took care of 3 kids full time while working on getting the house ready for sale.  After the house was sold, I spent over a month packing up the house on my own for the move in early April.  

I spent April, May, and June unpacking and assembling furniture for our new home.  I was determined to make this new home a haven for my kids and I.  By July, I was mentally and physically spent.  Just when I was feeling a bit better, I invited my parents to stay with us for 5 weeks.  During that time, I couldn’t have hated life more.  I am not one who openly complains about life, but would rather quietly confide with friends.  Let me tell you, living with parents as an adult is very challenging, especially when there is such a huge generational and cultural difference.  That had pushed me beyond my mental capacity.  After they left in mid-August, it was about preparing the boys to go back to school.  This is just never-ending.

By September, I felt I had nothing left in me.  I have no motivation left because I lost sight of my goals and dreams in my marathon of nightmares.  You can only run for so long without water and rest.  I had been so busy surviving, I had stopped working, stopped creating, and most of all, I had stopped dreaming.

I have had many conversations with myself as to what I should do next.  It would not be easy either way.  I had spent a lot of time refining my craft and there is still so much more to learn, which continues to excite me and drive me to do better.  Yet, reality can be stressful.  Fighting to come to an agreement with the past, and treading in the pool of stress and noises from everywhere made it really tough to dream, let alone set achievable goals.  

However, there is still a little flame inside of me I call the “pilot light.”  Just like the pilot light in a gas fireplace, it stays on until one shuts off the gas valve.  That little pilot light just needed a surge of gas to fire up the fireplace again.  I had kept that pilot light on through daily gratitude journaling, and adding on some reading and music time.  Then slowly I started writing again.  Writing helps me focus on the things that truly mattered in that moment and the messages I was trying to convey to my audience.  

The more I write, the more I realized how my creative soul had been slowly corroding since the separation in September 2019.  In spite of it being necessary to take a step back from my creativity to take care of my kids and trying to hold the walls up around them, I had allowed the one thing that nurtures my soul to slowly slip away.  

Now that my kids have adjusted to this new way of life and that they finally see the happy side of me shining through, I am giving myself permission to live my dream once more.  I am dusting off myself from the fall and picking myself up.  Time to fire up my creativity again.

Thank you to those who had been there for me in big and small ways, and those who offered a word of encouragement and support.  You have no idea I had been collecting them in my little "jar."  Your faith in me had kept me going! ~ Love, Eva