I really need to know...

"I'm stretching again, but my resilience is long gone and I can't bounce back. It's tiresome dragging around the excess, yet I'm unsure whether it's safe to cut it off. What if it houses my essence, or the directional portion of my id?"

They say every 7 years you're a completely new person. They say that every year - every day for that matter - you are physically different from the time before. That makes sense considering my hair has been falling out in handfuls and silent waves that lay across my carpet like shadowy ghosts upon the shore. (Scary.)

I'm shedding. But it's not just my hair. I shower, of course, and when there are witnesses near when I'm through (which is rare), they'll comment on the red lines reaching across my arms and back and chest. "You're scratched!" they'll proclaim as if they discovered some forbidden treasure to my personal life; but they're wrong. It's just the marks I receive from delicately pealing back my old skin. I know the image seems more tragic than my words admit, but I'm pretty sure I bathe and lather and rinse like most others. I have a loofa and I sud it with Oil of Olay moisturizing body wash, yet all I have to do is attend to an itch with the passing of my finger and a trail of skin comes pealing away, resting in the pit of my nail. By the time my shower is over I look like a shiney victim of sado-masachism and there's a body caught in my drain. And every day it's the same. Goodbye Old Meredith, hello New.

It's growing hard to keep up with my development. I've realized for quite some time that my head forges through reality at a rate just beyond what my body will allow - that's why I walk like a ram surging forward, brow heavy, eye on some invisible target. As I drive and press onward, omniously knowing, the rest of me tails behind a little lackluster. The resilience to maintain my form fades out like watercolor, yet holds heavy in the past like a cautioning anchor unwilling to let freedom fly.

At this moment I'm really not sure what I am. Transitioning from old to new seems more strenuous than ever before, even though they say it's a revolving and reoccuring cycle of life and death.

I would like a cut off point.

I would like to know that who I was 3 years ago was a different me, a stupider me, a me that would of course make those silly mistakes. And I would like to know that here, in this era, I am wise and able and if nothing else, deserving of the things hard working adults are owed. Have I not trudged around with an excess long enough? Am I not West enough? Am I not brave enough? When can I say "I am new. I am now exactly here in this fresh moment without a shadow for bagage."?

Well, if the skin in the drain or the hair on my carpet house the directional portion of my id, so be it, let it sit, let it stay. I feel ready to break out into my new self even if it means wanderlust and overwhelmed engagement of the present. I'm eager to face a new reality. I'm excited to see what things await me, and I'm quite keen on having my body in line with my head. It's time to pause the pressing foward, and simply relish in the now with a sparkling new wide-eyed wonderment.

I'd like to know that it's safe for me to stand here, bare, without my anchor... but I do know that it's time for a new adventure. So here I am.