Ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking.

I now have a better reading of our situation and need to inform you that we are changing direction.

The year 2016 was so far the most confusing period of my life. I knew something was wrong with how I was living, I knew I needed to make some changes. But I didn’t exactly know how to do it.

I only knew, or I thought I did, that I needed to seize full control of my life. “Reclaim“, I believe, was the word I used.

I used scare tactics to whip myself into shape; a lot of them costing me money I would have better spent elsewhere, like a monthly membership fee to a gym I ended up never going to. When they didn’t work, I numbly swallowed the “fact” that I was weak, lazy and would never have the discipline it takes to be successful in whatever I want to do. I raised the bar so high that, when I failed, I took it only as reaffirming that everything good that people see about me was an empty facade. And inside, nothing good.

In 2016, I wanted to write a memoir on this blog about how I (would have) reclaimed my life. I wanted to share with the world the answers to my, and their, questions. The problem was, I didn’t always have answers. So, the empty pages and lack of updates became my memoir.

A fitting one at that. Because now I realize how arrogant I was for wanting to take full control of life, to reclaim it.

Who in this world has full control of their lives? An answer to every single question that arises?

That’s right; nobody. And that’s why we’re making changes to how we approach this space.

Here, I will document my lengthy journey “into the marsh”. In nature, a marsh forms a transition between two contrasting ecosystems: aquatic and terrestrial. In here, marsh serves as a metaphor for the state of mind I’m in — that is, a transition between youth and adulthood.

In doing so, I will write whatever I want to write. If in them other people can find help and assurance, good; if they happen to be all questions and no answers, so be it. I am no longer treating my writing as a cure for other people’s trouble, or requiring myself to be the healer. Instead, I also like to think of “into the marsh” as a cheeky pun for journeying into myself, because “marsh” — clearly — stems from my name, Marsha.

For, after all, I am just another patient, whom I hope will grow wiser with time and is okay with taking her time to do so.

Let’s get crazy.

 

Credits:

Photograph by Ezra Jeffrey