Thoughts: Brains, Change, and Identity

​Today was a migraine day. I’ve had a headache since 8am this morning. Probably longer, I was just too asleep to feel that throbbing pressure in the front of my head.
 
Today, it hit me how much I’ve lost this year. There is time I cannot account for, memories I know I have but it doesn’t feel like I was actually there, life I’ve lived that feels like a blur. It’s like I’m waking up from a trance, where I had these experiences and interacted with all these people and I was just a shadow of myself and now I’m trying to figure out what was real and what will last. I know some of you know all too well what I'm talking about.
 
I took an acting class this weekend. It was so much fun. But it was hard. Harder than it used to be. I used to be able to look a script, a speech, a vocab list, you name it and have it memorized almost immediately. It wasn’t like that this weekend. It was me agonizing over lines, rehearsing in front of mirrors, writing and rewriting, speaking and re-speaking the words over and over again and still never getting the lines I was supposed to memorize quite right. That was hard. It was a wakeup call that got me thinking about how much I’ve missed without even realizing it.
 
It’s like I’ve been alive, technically, but half asleep, at times half dead, and while I’m profoundly grateful to be standing on two feet, out of the thick of it, alive and well, I am having to face the fact that my current me is a new me, broken in some ways and better in others. It’s weird, meeting a new version of yourself. It’s a fascinating learning experience. It makes life interesting. You get to meet a part of you that was always there but has been hidden behind a knack for memorizing and the daily rigor of athletic discipline. It’s not really a new me, I guess, it’s just that my brain works a little differently now. It might not be forever, but I’m glad I get to meet this part of me that was hidden beneath the life I was living. It’s created space for me to exist differently.
 
Sometimes, change is hard because it happens over time but you become aware of it in increments. It can be exciting and it can be terrifying and it can be sad.
 
But, you deserve to take up space. Just because you’ve changed doesn’t make you any less worthy. It doesn’t take away your right to show up and try your best. Let go of expectations and enjoy the struggle, the journey, the triumph of transformation.