Inside Out- River to the Sea

Five years ago, or thereabouts I pondered the concept of a blogosphere. Blog, a trunction of the word weblog, seemed perhaps to offer a safe place for a personal documentation. Why not, for the worst thing you write is the best thing you did not write.  It wasn’t so much a new reflective device, as logging a personal history is something I started to do early on, in the beginning, as a small child. The first daily entries as a diarist were made in the morning, every day, sunny side up with a packet of confetti colored pencils and a humble exercise book coated in Holly Hobbie wrapping paper. Holly, by chance, seemed as bright as Christmas cheer, the original boho vintage patchwork dreamer, blue bonnet or yellow, depending, with her sights fixed on perennial hope over “mope, mope mope” (You’re My Sunshine by Holly Hobbie). 

Journaling therefore became something homespun which grew from day to day, to year to year and through the seasons of life’s unfolding story. It was a tool, a self-medicator, a time to look inwards for personal growth and development, space to solve problems and to reduce stress, to increase self esteem and most of all to create, to dream and to wonder about what might lie ahead.

My first blog attempt was just that, a kind of diary with an extension outwards. Here I began, a modest balcony enlightening an introverted world, a private pastiche of emotions and dreaming and opinions and love, turned inside out through a very valid process of sharing. And so it was me, myself and I who chose the title Inside-Out (River to the Sea). 

It seemed at this time I was not prepared for the outside altogether. Instead it was a pseudonym I penned to what were very raw and personal meanderings in a rather backwards to forwards momentum. It was nevertheless a time of learning to live again. It was time post the most tremendous storm, relatively speaking, of having been caught in the vortex of a tornado, a breathlessly consuming inverted column, suffocating, dizzy and incessantly relentless. There had seemed no way out and yet I found my feet again, both of them, eventually. It was a period of time where I began learning to manage an extremely painful chronic illness and what had been, for some years, a crippling anxiety disorder. 

Yes, I found my feet with hands linked to a wonderful program (thank you St Vincent’s Hospital Betty Walker Pain Clinic), a network of professional therapists, personal supports and a keen dedication to literature offering well supported techniques in the management of chronic illness and anxiety disorders. 

Inside Out- River to the Sea is forever gone, or is it? I deleted that very first ceding to the blogosphere from the inside to the outside and back in again because to be perfectly frank, there were still some lingering loitering rather inequitable twinges of shame afoot. It was rather like wearing socks too thick with ruby slippers that might otherwise fit. 

Now I say to anyone wrestling with fear thrown overboard into threat patrol, there is no shame in looking to re-navigate the complex interaction of human emotions busily building ones sense of self beneath the surface. To anyone afraid of sharing the truth, of cutting yourself wide open and out to expose the sad, the fear, the joy, the anger, the disgust and the peachy pinky orange sunrise sky I would like to call hope, don’t be. Much like an orange, the inner core is indeed always the best part. Savor your own truth. You are you and you is not a fairytale in black and white, not a witch or a troll or a king or a queen or a fairy princess but a wonderfully complex human being. You will win. You will lose. You will live and love and live some more. You will dream. You are important and you can be great.