Comfortably Uncomfortable

     Comfortably uncomfortable is the only way I can explain my last few weeks. I have found myself in this whirl of feeling every emotion in the book all at once and man is it overwhelming. For so many months I have blocked myself from feeling. I have numbed myself with work, activities, and anything possible in attempts to not feel, to block, and hopefully over pass whatever was coming on my emotional rollercoaster. Through all of the blocking and manipulating of my emotions I knew that I was not going to get away with overpassing the overwhelming wave of emotions hitting me from the many events that have taken place in my life in the last year.
        A little over a year ago both of my grandfathers were sitting on either side of me as we celebrated my graduation in my parents new home. I was job searching, unsure of where I was going to end up teaching and if I was going to have a classroom of my own fresh out of college. I was on an emotional upswing after months of dealing with crippling anxiety and deep depression as I worked through many repressed memories and pent up emotions. I was scared to leave the comfortable environment my parents had created to be on my own and I was experiencing a new phase in many of my friendships as well as went our separate ways beginning our next stages in life.
       A year later I sit here writing in my new home after teaching my first day of summer school in a classroom I love with all my being. I sit here mourning and missing some of those that impacted my life in ways I didn't realize until recently. I have taken steps to being a healthier version of myself body, mind, and soul. I have found new friendships and continued to develop old ones. I have cried, laughed, smiled, screamed, whispered and sat in silence. I have explored many new possibilities in this last year.
      I am sure that many of us can sit and say we never would have imagined our lives where they are at now a year ago. I have said that many times before to myself. This year however I sit here with something different in my heart. I sit here with a heart exploding with all of the fullness life has bought me but also with a hole I'm not sure I will ever be able to not feel. I am comfortably uncomfortable in my life right now. One moment I am loving life and feeling comfortable in my own skin. I feel ready to take on the world and share of myself with others. But in the next breath I feel uncomfortable and closed off. I feel a sense of anxiety pour over me. I feel lost and unsure of everything and I begin to miss and mourn terribly.
   Last night I was talking to someone very special to me. Someone that in their short time impacting my life has given me a sense of comfort at times when it seemed impossible. Last night as we were talking they said to me " who ever said life was comfortable? and why is being uncomfortable so negative and scary to you? Uncomfortable means you are facing something and not pushing it away, if you told me you were comfortable in all of this I would be worried about you more than I already am." My response was to sit in silence. I didn't know how to answer that because I had never spun my  uncomfortable feelings into something uplifting. I had never thought of my vulnerability as a springboard into the uplifting parts of my life. So today I sit here thinking of this persons words and unfailing support with my comfortably uncomfortable emotions. I sit here present and realizing that my uncomfortableness is only the beginning to the great things coming. My grieving is a path of growth. My vulnerabilities are beautiful and my anxieties are only speed bumps in this grand plan that I have very little control over. So for as long as need be I will be comfortably uncomfortable.