Contained contentment.

I have gone through so much pain this year.

I’m confronting that after a very long time through that scope of hindsight as I look back on months glazed in the salty precipitation of old tears. The pain temporarily withered me down to a point where I no longer wished to think about it but over the last few days and hours I have been reliving it, dissecting it, understanding it and healing from it.

For so long I was so conflicted. So much was tangled up in my neural connections and until perhaps a couple of months ago, when the bulk of those wounds gave way to the healing process. Yet, its final stages still remain- where that scar is yet to quietly fade. That’s where I am right now.

It is through that crystal ball that I inspect what once was. From February until July, a raging war was taking place where I was losing to my ego and learning each time I fell on the battlefield.

There were times where I felt so utterly defenceless with nothing left in me to fight the pain that gripped at my core and ate into me in dark nights in faraway places.

And now I’ve come out of all that to end up… well, here. To my place of contained contentment after the no-mans-land of don’t-think-about-it. It’s the place where I know I will prise open my heart and love will pour out- just not yet. From this place I admire blue skies, sunsets and green fields for what they are and not for the space they donate so I may escape from the consumption of inner turmoil. It’s the place from which I experience utmost gratitude from the tiniest things so that I feel no need to let bigger things sweep me off my feet.

But contained contentment only goes so far. It acts as a comfort blanket- a cosy, predictable cocoon bathed in warm sunshine from which the real thing is bound to emerge and spread its glorious wings.

If I am the caterpillar in that cocoon, do I push its walls to break out of it? Or do I bask in its warmth for just a little longer? But what if it gets so comfortable in there that I stay there for too long and stagnate?

I know me. The flow I experience with writing means that I observe myself as another person would observe me but whilst also knowing my thoughts.

Contained contentment is not for people like me. I have too much to give. I cry at movies. I live for good conversations. I long for human connection both infinite and infinitesmal. I love with a fierce kindness. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I write everything on a blog.

The universe will coax me out of my contained contentment and I will soon be released into the drunken party outside and eventually, as is inevitable, I will feel the wholeness of true, uncontained contentment.

What a precarious place to be.