Today’s prompt is Reclaiming. Use this word as your jumping off point or simply as a word within your post. Write about reclaiming something from your past, taking up an old hobby, or re-examining a memory. Is there something in your life you need or want to reclaim? Is there something that has reclaimed you?  If you choose to take up the challenge, please add a pingback to this prompt.

Reclaiming

I am working on reclaiming my life.

Reclaiming it in bits and pieces.

A moment of clarity one day acts as a building block for tomorrow.

Bit by bit. Piece by piece. Finding what has been lost over the years.

I’m working them back together like a puzzle. My young woman figure is likely gone forever, but other things—my time, my identity, my voice—these I am reclaiming. Bit by bit, piece by piece, one piece at a time.

Like boards of weathered wood from a long-forgotten barn, each fragment reclaimed builds my character and strengthens my resolve to move ahead. To make necessary changes. To become the best new-life-phase-self I can be.

Pieces of old brass, newly polished, add sparkle and shine to help focus my attention on the process.

Knobs and hinges are added, finishing touches allowing doors to open and close without squeaking or rubbing. Many will be thrown wide open, welcoming new opportunities.

Some doors will be quietly closed, gently pushed until the latch clicks so they don’t reopen unexpectedly and request that I revisit whatever it is they hold at bay.

Still others will be locked, and the worn skeleton keys—jangling together—will be tossed from a cliff and into a deep ravine far below, minimizing the chances that I, or anyone else, will have access to those doors again.

But the reclaimed bits… they will grow and strengthen, and soon I will have much of myself back, but I will be different. The rough edges have been worn smooth by life. The sharp bits have become sharper as they’ve navigated life’s craggy terrain.

I won’t go back to the life I once knew—the person I was early in this journey—nor would I want that. I come to my reclaiming with greater experience, broader failures, innumerable successes. And with a great deal of love and care (and perhaps a healthy diet and some exercise) I can most definitely move from here to where I want to be.

It may be hard work, but it won’t be impossible.