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Life has been challenging lately. For everyone. I know I'm not alone in this experience and perhaps my challenges would seem minor to other people. But they aren't insignificant or small to me.
Over the course of the last week I feel like puzzle pieces are slowly falling in to place.
This puzzle is really hard and it will probably take me the rest of my life to complete it. Just getting one piece in to place feels like such an accomplishment, you'd think I'd give up and not bother trying any longer. But in spite of how difficult it is I feel compelled to continue.
The puzzle is me - my life. I was born with all the pieces of the puzzle. The picture was complete and it was beautiful. As I grew and became influenced by the world around me, the picture was disassembled so it could be reassembled in a way that suited the world. In this process, some extra pieces were added to the box that don't fit. Removing those pieces is my job. I think I've spent a lot of years trying to find places that those pieces fit because they were gifted to me by well-meaning people who love me, but I've come to the conclusion that they will never fit into the picture I'm trying to create. The picture that is what is truly me - the original picture I was born with. So these pieces need to be discarded. That's painful. I'm attached to these pieces, but as long as they are still on the table, they are confusing and making it harder to complete my puzzle.
I'm in the process of discarding these errant pieces. It's not easy. It takes effort and sometimes sustained or repeated effort as I find there are more pieces there than I thought.
I'm tired. And I'm sad. I thought I knew what the picture was going to look like and I exerted so much effort making those errant pieces fit into the puzzle only to have to remove them systematically and discard them. I feel like I've failed myself. I feel like I've failed others. But there's really no where to go but forward. Those pieces need to come out and I need to rebuild the picture with the pieces that actually fit. Then it will be true and right and it will make sense to both me and the world around me.