Felt appropriate to talk about the newness of all the new things in my life on a Monday. It’s a new week, almost a new month, and for me, a whole new everything.

I’m sitting here at my desk, peering out the window at the snowy, tree-lined landscape, dotted with coyote and deer tracks traversing the freshly fallen, white blanket, looking through the swirling line of smoke from my aromatherapy diffuser, into which I put far too much faith and hope for calm, punctuated by a playlist of lo-fi beats that remind me of a loft I never owned, in an unknown city, and relishing in the peace and authenticity of it all.

I jumped off a cliff, and landed here.

Divergent boundaries. Two bodies moving apart, causing a rift valley.

I’ll spare you the gruesome details, as they are unimportant. Life’s tectonic plates shifted, and an oceanic trench was born. It swallowed me whole, into the abyss. No breath. No chance of survival. Submission.

A sad ending, sure. But also, a beginning.

There are aspects of my old life I’ll miss, terribly, including the naievete of a woman who chose to believe in the potential of her life, in the beauty of tangible things, in the glimpses and crumbs of happily ever after, that she chose to ignore so many whispers of caution until the songs were sirens and no longer could be avoided.

I was so focused on carefully curating a version of me, that I forgot the real version of me is better than anything I could ever design or fabricate. That insincerity stole years from me.

But oh, the years ahead of me, full of owning my want, and joy, and peace. I’m white knuckling it from here on out, and I’m not totally sure of my footing yet, but here we are. One step.