Verity's Book IV

Reflections (November Blues, I Admit)

I wrote these words last month when I had had a really rough few weeks. I'm feeling better now (it helped to write them). But I'm posting this anyway as some transparency for my inner world of late.

***

Sometimes you feel like you're falling apart a little bit, and you wonder how you could be so full of clarity and direction before, and so hazy now.

My seasons of confidence, no matter how much instability they come out of, always seem to rock back into grasping in the end. Verily, all is vanity.

I've fallen out of love with my job, lost some of the filter that I've always worn to the public, and I don't know who I am without those fine brushstrokes on my rough edges. Am I less kind? Was I always less kind? Is it me, or is it them? Does it matter?

Every time my publishing situation comes up, I struggle to honor my conscience and abide by the non-disclosure agreement I signed. I come away from each conversation wondering if I said too much, because I want to say so much more. Am I the person I want to be, who keeps her promise and stays silent even if to her own hurt? I feel more like the bitter person barely cloaked in a semblance of civility. My story is known to some but I will never be allowed to tell it the way I want. I wonder, as I write: is this too much? Should I even say this? Where does the spirit of the law end?

I think I would want to say less, were it not for the fact that I am denied the freedom of saying more.

I know part of the job struggle is simply overwhelm. I've had burnout before. I've just never disliked what I do quite so much at the same time as burnout. But I wanted to go out strongly, with a smile, and I wonder if my cracks from what I can't handle anymore will leave a taste in the mouths of the people I've come to love when I say goodbye (only two weeks now).

I'm moving far away, and it comes with decisions and unknowns. I love the unknown but I fear change. I don't know why I haven't cried yet.

And I reflect on my fears and what I value, and what I idolize, and I wonder: is this, itself, part of what it means to be purified? Northerner or Southerner, refined or outspoken, free or chained, my identity is not meant to be bound irrevocably to any of those things. If they go, I am still in Christ. I cannot hold myself to the trappings that I decide are me (I wrote a whole book about this). If they stay, they stay; if they change, they change. There is humility in admitting this, and more humility, that I do not yet have, to accept it day by day.

But I am in Christ, and he writes my story with a wisdom I cannot outperform.

I am many things, some static, some shifting beyond my control. But before any of those, I am in Christ. And that is the only constant I have to have.

***

Since journaling the above, I've cried, said my goodbyes to everyone except immediate family, and got a few thrills from browsing job openings and booking a hotel room. I had a farewell party at work and felt the humbling burden of being loved.

The chaos is quieting. Sometimes November blues just come a month early.

Maybe these ones will be back, but right now, that's okay.