So many things have changed in my life lately.  It is why I haven’t been so prolific in my writings lately; the changes have taken so much of my brain space that the cathartic release of writing just doesn’t have room.  I write for my own clarity but these days that clarity is so far from my ability to comprehend that mere words on a page isn’t going to help.

I have always held that change was important.  It was a way to create a new outlook, to find excitement or to simply try something new.  Moving has always been a great way to clean out my clutter.  New jobs were new challenges.  Even a new haircut was simply a new look for me to try.

But the changes that seem to sometimes be bombarding me aren’t easy or even comfortable.  I am use to change on some level in all aspects of my life, and sometimes I even go out of my way to seek it.  I try to find change for my children to introduce them to new things, and I try to seek change to keep myself from suffering from boredom.  And I am good at finding it.

What I never realized is that despite all the change in my life, some I have brought to myself and the rest the was brought to me, I have still always depended on a certain level of routine, of comfort.  Despite the fact I will easily and without fear go find a new job, there was always a routine to find myself buried in.  Comfort of the routine is a universal need that even the smallest of animals look for.  The routine is what children need to thrive, and it is what we each need to find in order to take the time in our lives to survive.

I like my routine.  I have developed it over the last couple of years out of a necessity to survive that which was unbelievably difficult.  The stuff in my life that I dealt with on a daily basis; those things that were so out of my control that the only way I could find a will was to create things I could depend on.  Some of the routine runs to the ridiculous, but I have come to recognize the importance of it.  Hitting the snooze button the same amount of times each morning or parking in the same spot each day.  Useless things that were not important but that were constant.  And in that constant I could find relief.

But this last month, even those little things that I could count on have seemed out of balance.  Maybe because now when I hit the snooze button something is different.  Maybe when I park in my unmarked and unassigned parking spot I am doing so while holding my breath for something to remain the same; a hope that I have never needed to feel before.

I don’t know if I can describe all that has changed in my life this last month.  Mostly because I believe that there are things in this world that are so sacred they shouldn’t be talked about in a blog the world can see.  They are not that important, but simply that huge.  Could I spend days writing paragraphs about the changes in my life? Yes.  But part of my heart simply can’t.  It is too; too big, too great, too outside of everything I have known for so long.

Most of the change is external.  Unfortunately for me, some of the change required is internal.  One can expect the world to change without being affected in some way.  And as my world has changed, it is without a doubt changing me as well.  I am having to adapt to the change, to rewrite the truths that I once depended on. And the comfort of routine isn’t helping me to do that.

I thought I was one kind of person, living one kind of life for so long; and it turns out that wasn’t the path.  I was simply being what I was forced by circumstance to be, and now I have to be what I was always needed to be.  And there is no routine, and no comfort in that change.  Internal change comes at great cost and at great risk.  But it is the risk I am most scared of.

With the changes that are daily knocking me on my ass, I am learning that I to have to change.  And it is a risk.  I could give my all, possibility for the first time, and I might lose all that I hold.  I could finally look into my true heart and be rejected for everything that I am.  I could finally try to fly only to find that the fall is much greater than I was prepared for.

I realize that everyone from my therapist to my husband will try to pat me on the head and point out the importance of not only the change but the risk.  They will tell me that there is no real risk, that I am imagining all that I could lose. But call it woman’s intuition or maybe simply sure knowledge, but changing how I do things, what I am in all aspects of my life not only destroys all my routines, but comes with massive amounts of risk.

I depend on so many things because for the longest time I haven’t had any other choice.  I have handled all that I know because as a modern woman I recognized long ago that I have no choice.  There are times in our life when we either swim or sink, and the laps that I have been taking for the last years can not be stopped just because the weather has changed.  I am still swimming in the same direction, even though the weather went from cloudy to sunny.  I can’t stop; I believe with my whole heart that if I stop the world as I know it will stop.

That is the problem with real change; and I am not talking about moving to a new city.  But the change that affects your routine to the point it is no longer comfortable can literally destroy.  It destroys all the illusions as well as all the truths I have lived with for years.  My change is taking my foundations and ripping them to shreds.  And the worst are the changes deep in my own soul.

And the truth is, I don’t know if I have the guts to even try to fly.