I had this sitting in drafts for more than a year, from when I was mentally measuring how far I had to get from myself, from certain parts of myself, and how the parts of myself I moved into were about a different dialect of survival than I had previously known. I also had a risky curiosity about defamiliarizing the self, elected a brand of punishment for what I perceived as a failure, and a wonder about what remains of the self in elected abandonment and alienation.

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The mutability I conduct necessitates an identified frame that provides a measure for how far I can recede or expand myself, otherwise, the expansion or contraction will simply continue to unspool. And even when it exceeds or shrinks, I was previously too often taken by the movement itself to stop or cease. The momentum became a curiosity, and the effect it had on others was a way to try and please, achieve, and stretch myself, but often meant self abandoning for the interest in witnessing another’s subsequent movement or action, or an outcome I was simply interested in seeing if I could create. A sort of energetic Stretch Armstrong for the sake of it. Again, a curiosity. And probably an excess of creativity.

And, being this mutable, this Sagittarian and Piscean, while the editions of myself that have unfolded over decades have differed somewhat, I know why ages 32-40 were such a stark shock to this life. Why I elected as much. And I knew even then, why I abandoned most of the core of me, occupying my own perimeter, filling in the radius, and abandoning the center aside from a thin, exposed shimmer of the soul; like a cat clinging to the walls of its own room. I know exactly why but it doesn’t make the image or experience any less of a shock to measure from this distance and time. Or, the toll upon my body any less extreme. You can abandon your body for your mind, or your mind for your body, but you will still be charged either way.

I’d occupy the center in potent, technicolor iterations for short times to find out if I was still there. I remember showing up for my dissertation in work coveralls and MAC Ruby Woo lips, pale as a candle and fine fissures throughout from the work. Leni asked me what it meant to write it and I answered incandescent, crying, but in an exhausted cry. Weak, thin tears that made no difference to the state I was in. Like waking up a moment from sleep during a recent grief and realizing you were crying in your dream anyway. But I left there and shut the door. Returned to my own perimeter, stepping over much of myself on the way. A way to live around the mess of wounded, abandoned, and writhing sentience and only access the creative force. Extract the marrow but ignore the meal, unable to occupy my own body in a way that could allow the pain to quarter for a moment.

Between the ages of (I argue) 37-50ish we undergo tremendous Plutonian destruction and then resurrection. Some will get through this period still needing to cling to the fabricated identity of themselves they had hewn in the Saturn return in the late 20s to early 30s. And while that’s the first blush of our adult selves, it isn’t made to carry us through a whole maturation. That’s where Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune go to work in the mid ages. We’re meant to mature by aligning back to our soul and this incarnation’s goals, and then making new choices from that point — in partnership, friendship, work, values, vision, and faith — that better fit our primary self that was born into this life, and that many of us had to fight to keep sight of.

If the mid-life transits (or, the mid-life crisis), which everybody must pass through and is arguably the hardest point of any life lived as long, is the appearance of urge for the unlived life, or, we are led to the door of our unlived life. We can watch as some surrender to it, some choose to fight it and fail, and some are cataclysm-ed and then transformed by it. It tries to reset us to where we’re supposed to be, a jolting realignment, breaking all the ways built on false soil, and where we had ‘notions’ about ourselves or moved too far from our truth.

When I was younger I sometimes took far greater risks than I could afford, and getting as away from my core self as I could was one such way. Generally it turned out fine, resulting in remarkable or rare experiences that made good stories, shaped me for the better, or became important self-secrets, but when it did not, it really did not. And it’s this mutability, coupled with the most sensitive of nervous systems, which should have been protected and sheltered at first by family, and then later by myself. But I didn’t come to that realization until a decade ago and then hurried to push everything away to methodically and deliberately titrate — in a way that’s inherent to me but was not previously allowed — what would be allowed to come in.

If we are individuals who didn’t have families that at least partly fostered and honored our individuality and singular needs and curiosities, we had to steal glimpses of ourselves in far smaller ways, lifting reflections from where we found ourselves most illuminated, even when it was only a spark, suspicion, or resonance.

There are mundane moments in life from when I was young that have stuck with me. Non-remarkable, quickly passing moments where I could feel my soul stretch and breathe before needing to take cover again. One was at a zoo field trip. It was a bright day and warm late spring weather and I had finished eating lunch on the grass outside. My friends had gone in to rejoin the group but we still had time. I realized that nobody who knew me was around. And my family had no idea where I was. And I felt elated to just be out in the world, unknown, and free and alone. It was a tremendous feeling of liberation. Of just being a living breathing thing in the world, energy connecting with other energy. I thought of leaving to experience more of that feeling but couldn’t figure out where I would go.

And another, ice skating on a frozen pond in the winter among tilting, dead, soft yellow prairie grass in winter. I was with my best friend and we were off the side of a pretty busy road. Her mom had just dropped us off and we trotted through the collapsing grasses to the pond and laced on our skates. Two young girls just skating on a frozen pond alone with no sound but some distant cars and wind and a time on a watch we should be ready to leave by.

I knew who I was in museums, in the city, in nature. I knew who I was alone, in rooms, with music, on the floor, at the movies, and especially on paper. But all of those moments were extremely fleeting, mocked, judged, or prevented. Life was in service to the fabricated identities and the terminal fragility and immature violences of others.

It’s impossible when living in a war zone of abuse to figure out who you are. Who you are will not get you fed or seen. Who you are must become a survivalist specializing in the ways that will hopefully generate the least pain on any given day.

When life opens up and becomes more or less your own, it takes years if not decades (and some are never able) to stop magnetizing the same landscape that was lived in. If you are a boxer, you find people to box and situations you have to fight. But if you want to love somebody, especially the self, you have to unlearn that fight. You have to know when you need or want the gloves, and when to keep your hands in ice. And if you are growing in that way, you will need the gloves very infrequently if at all.

I don’t know when I was farthest from myself and pressed into all of the strange secondary aspects of myself, living around my own light. I know I wore a lot of colors, I ate food. There was less blood, and blades. I oriented myself to an osprey nest. I befriended the snakes in my yard, I otherwise let almost my whole life out on contract to others. But I found this piece of writing and I think this was pretty close. By age 38 I knew I had gone too far past myself, and simultaneously, had collapsed in on myself. I knew I was the negative space of myself, hesitant pencil marks and clear surface making my shape. I knew by that age I was going to have to die or resurrect. Eventually, I’d do both, in both literal and spiritual ways.

“And it always felt like I have this unknown deal that’s hard for me to keep.” That’s it. Some part of me knew what I was doing, the cost, and that I was going to keep doing it a while more. It was a costly exile. And a permeating, shocking, fathomless, saturated birth and return after.