43

I was born on June 7th at 4:04am in SoCal. I often wonder if there was any time from my childhood where I got to be a child. I have scars up my left leg; they have faded over time, but the echo of those now faint marks tells me stories of a soul that was born into a world that would try to break her. They are marks from when I was a baby. The only bone I have ever broken in my life. The story as I have heard it is that my mother accidentally dropped me, causing my left femur to break. Within that very bone lies a truth that is much more sinister. Some injuries haunt us, even if we cannot remember them. They live deep within us. Scars forever upon our vessels and souls. Etched so deeply they will take a lifetime to fully work out.

I am reflecting on so much more than this last year. Even as I type this, my entire life up to this point is being circularly wrapped up and placed in my box of memories. Each version of myself being set free to live in peace and safety. A truth I am coming to embrace with love is that for as long as I can remember, I have had to be an adult to some capacity, and as of late I don’t even know how to have fun anymore. As I reflect, I feel like the teenager within me is being reborn. 43 will be my teenage rebel year, a year where I discover who I am when I am not being the giver. A year of me, the year Anna Marie Thomas is fully born.

Since mid January I have embarked on a soul-altering journey. I have learned how to love myself unconditionally, but I have never had the space to heal my nervous system. I gave myself that time and space, the safety, to heal and now I am embarking on healing my relational trauma. I have realized that some healing cannot be done alone; it has to be done with others. I have always known this on some level, but where I went wrong is in trying to heal it with an unregulated nervous system and within romantic relationships. What I am coming to find is that what heals this kind of trauma the best are deep friendships. I used to think that making friends as an adult was hard, but it was only a truth because I was trying to control the friendship and expecting people to be something they are not. Creating an unwillingness to to be able to let them go.

I can see how I would choose people out of fear and out of familiarity. Now I choose people who do no harm, and if I find they do, I have no problems walking away. This is my boundary and this is what heals relational trauma deep in my bones. The ability to walk away from abuse, the ability to walk away when I am feeling consumed, the ability to choose myself over and over again regardless of the situation. I no longer have to fear people because I know that I will protect myself. As I have stepped into this power within myself certain things I have always wanted just faded away. Romantic relationships in particular feel like an archaic game of cat and mouse. Full of manipulation and control.

Don’t get me wrong, romance still excites me when it is in the movies or books, but it is not something I crave in my reality. Perhaps it is the trauma, but more than that I am enjoying putting myself first for once. I enjoy my time alone and my time with friends. I enjoy sleeping alone and waking up alone. I enjoy being free. It is a new and refreshing space to be in. I am not saying I will be alone forever; I am wise enough to know how quickly the tides of life can change, but I look at men, and women, who come across my path and I am instantly put off by them in any romantic sense. I know that if I ever do decide to go down that path again it will be with someone very rare.

So…. Why write about all this relationship stuff if I don’t want it? Because the past me did. She wanted it so badly that she would ignore who someone was, ignore when they harmed her in the hopes that the small good she saw would prevail. That her goodness could wake them up. What happened instead was their darkness woke me up, and now I can let that part of me go. This being said, if we do not embrace these parts of ourselves with love, with the reverence they deserve, they will continue to suffer. I know that part of me wanted that love because she never felt love, so I will never deny her of having it. That part of me will never know that pain again. This is why I reflect, this is how I respect and honor every version of who I am and who I have been.

I know now I am loved, and not from people outside of me, but because I love myself. I am love, I always have been, and always will be. This brings me to my last remaining hours of 42. What do I want? Where is my soul calling me? What do I want to do? This is my year of I. My year of Anna Marie Thomas.

Happiest of Birthdays to me. May this new year bring me endless adventures, joys, and abundance. I love you, always and forever.