Comeback

Hello again.

It’s been a minute since I last wrote here. I spent time in Europe caring for a family member, and the experience threw my life off balance. For a while, I felt like I’d lost my footing. But slowly, I found my way back to peace of mind and realized I’d never truly lost control. I just couldn’t see it at the time.

Today, someone I knew twenty years ago messaged me and said, “You were always the balanced one.” He was referring to my emotional steadiness. That comment caught me off guard. Which version of me he was talking about? I remember that time as my most rebellious, impulsive, and, frankly, idiotic phase. It made me pause and reflect on how wildly different our internal self-perception can be from how others see us. Does time distort reality, or does it simply soften the edges?

Regardless, his words nudged me to look at my life now. The challenges I’ve been facing haven’t disappeared, but I find myself smiling more. I do feel balanced now… illusion or reality? Are we simply psyching ourselves into becoming someone new?

The balanced me, Elise