A Life of Abandon
It’s time.
Not the urgent kind of time, not the ticking-clock kind. The quieter kind that arrives when something inside finally softens enough to be seen.
I’m taking apart the story even as I’m telling it—loosening the scaffolding that once held me upright but now blocks the view of who I am in this world.
So I begin there.
I turn toward my past, not to indict it, but to understand it. To see the strange grace in being abandoned, and in abandoning certain promises in return. The gift hidden there is this: I have lived a life of abandon. Not careless, exactly—but unfastened. Willing.
When I look back, I see moments of recklessness and danger, confusion and poor judgment. But I also see courage. Rigor. Great passion. Laser focus. Wholehearted delight. I see myself leaning forward—again and again—toward connection, toward mystery, toward whatever waits just beyond the bend in the road.
This is what I’m seeing now: My history is not made of random threads, but a weave. Gossamer and steel. Fragility and strength. Lightness and resolve, braided together.
And perhaps identity isn’t something to solve or pin down. Perhaps it’s something to tend—to hold up to the light and notice how it changes.
This feels like a beginning. Not a reinvention, but a re-seeing. A gentle willingness to let what has been rigid soften, and what has been faint grow strong.
It’s time.
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Kyla Merwin 