How far can one run before all that one is trying to forget, divert, and escape comes back to where we have fled? Is this the middle of our lives where we draw a truce breathlessly, stop bargaining with our pasts and face the incongruities of our deepest emotions? Or do some of us weasel around our truer selves, aborting our most harmful and hurtful memories?

I don’t know that everyone is as introspective and determined as I to make sense of my losses and embrace my gains. Many I know continue the grand avoidance by burying themselves in newness or clinging to safe behaviours which cause them deep regret. Newness, as in changing jobs, locales, or partners. Some embrace a new religion or avert their deepest threats by falling into the huge word, and world of “addictions.”

To fully grasp ROCK’s significance, is to understand that most all of us have an inner strength, a will, one could say to push on, to overcome adversities and pursue, albeit often ignorantly, a better place for ourselves. Not all of us have the skills, in fact, most of us do not. We learn the tricks along the way, bumping into walls, heading down one-way streets that end in catastrophe and facing the unexpected dips in the road with surprise. ROCK knows that no one has control over anything other than their miniscule tasks that give them the illusion of control. Unloading the dishwasher, vacuuming, and tidying up one’s surroundings gives some people a sense of control. True adhesiveness, however, doesn’t exist. Life will get messy again and again and there is not a damn thing we can do about it but examine who we are, accept our temporary gift of living on this planet and make choices that will break our hearts, or others, lose loved ones and gain loved ones, discover our passions and cling to them, for at the end of the day it will not matter how well you ironed that table cloth, only who sat around the table with you and enjoyed your company.

LittleMe is the part many of us hide away, live with in a small corner of our memories and try to avoid. There are amazingly many whose LittleMe is quite satisfied. They were adored, cared for and have the childhood the rest of us can only dream of; we can’t undo what is done, yet we can undo how we let what was done THEN affect our NOW.

Just when I think ROCK has given all the power to LittleMe and my NOW self can live in contentment, even joyfully, there will be a wee part, still unhealed that can be triggered and the roof I have built with confidence caves in. There’s more to address with all of me and with ROCK.  

For readers who have been following our journey from October 2021 perhaps you can see growth, we can, but the self-doubt is very present and MiddleMe must address some more hurts that broke her carefree ways, her giving heart and the unkindness, unfairness the world delves out and learn to shake the fear she still clamours to quell within.

I hope you stay with us on the journey as LittleMe, MiddleMe and ROCK cut through the untrodden jungle within.