Habit coaxes me towards saying that I don't want to write anything at all. That I would wish to abstain and defer, and leave things unsaid.
But I don't want to do that anymore. The world changes around me. People change. Time moves, the seasons go by. I must change, too.
That means I must examine who I used to be, and who I am. And who I will become. These are not easy things to do.
I grapple still with the acceptance that my old life, and the person I was within that life, is gone. I cannot get it back. I have clutched it in my mind and heart for so long. And while I cannot simply let it go all at once, and pretend as though it never happened, I want to begin to try. Just begin. Just try.
I think I fear not knowing myself. Not having a place, an identity, a role to fill. It was easier when I was just Éohard's daughter. I knew what to do, and who I was, and how to behave, how to think, how to feel. It was easier to be Conrob's wife. I knew what to do, and who I was, and how to behave, how to think, how to feel. Now I am nobody's anything. I am just Brynleigh. Alone. I never wanted to be anything else but Conrob's wife. That was all I wanted, forever, until I died. I would have been happy all my days.
What am I without someone to love, some purpose to pour my heart into? I feel like a shadow of myself. I speak, I move, I breathe, I sleep. A puppet. A meaningless echo. Only when I have something to focus my energies on, do I feel alive again. And I do not mean simple, mundane chores. The filling of buckets and the raking of straw is not enough to soothe this persistent ache in my breast. I must find something more.
But what?
The torment is lessened when I am near people I care for. When I feel perplexed and intrigued by Saexwyrd. When I worry for little Weda. When Beorggar questions me and makes me think about my own motives.
The younger version of myself would say that I wish I had never met Aeruthuil in the meadhall of Edoras. That I regretted all our words, the way I struck out at him, the choice to stay there and not storm away as I felt the old urge to do. I should be shocked and appalled that I opened up to him as I dared to. Yet I am not shocked nor appalled. Not exactly.
Surely, this means I am changing, as I claim to wish?
In the past, I would fear my own conscience, knowing that it would torture and harangue me with guilt. Instead, I feel fear of a different kind. Temptation, perhaps. A lost child faced with two paths in a wood; one light and sunny, and the other dark and shadowed. She knows the well lit path all too well. Her eyes are tired from its brightness. For once, the dim and the perilous seem appealing.
I am so grateful for his understanding. So grateful I could collapse and weep from it.
I must get away yet. I continue to make preparations quietly, and have not spoken of it to anyone. I feel certain that when the time comes to depart, I'll know it.
