yourcupoftea's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

Hey all,

I hope you've been doing well considering the world's in a much very different state right now.

I, myself, haven't worked in two weeks and probably won't for another month depending. It's okay though, I'm very lucky to be financially ready and get to spend my days with my wonderful, patient girlfriend who works from home.

I haven't had this much time on my hands since summer vacations before college. I've spent a great deal of it reading and cooking.

Mostly, here's what's been going on in my head:

Back when I left for a new city on my own, I detached myself so much that I created a rift between my old self and the present person. So on top of having a different name, I used the detachment to succeed in therapy with my present self before addressing the past self. There were no forced personality differences, my explanation is that my previous name held a lot of difficult attachments, guilt, and stress.

For the sake of simplicity, I'll clarify those two with names.

"Hi, I'm Val," is what I would say now.

I was previously called "Kevin" and I don't mind being called by that if that's the name you knew me as.

This past year was the first year that I felt fully healthy again. I have a difficult time reintroducing myself to my old friends because of this lengthy explanation. I started by first visiting Charleston a few times this past year.

My plan was to mend the gap between "Val" and "Kevin." I planned to do so by revisiting old memories and making new ones. Along the way, I saw as many friends as I could. They would ask, "Hey I saw you have a different Facebook name. What's up with that?" And I would explain because I'm no longer ashamed to share.

Whichever name, I am the same person and no longer need to detach or partition parts of myself. And with that, these days I'm finding that my old passions and hobbies return.

I find myself writing again and I find myself with the drive for life I had when I was younger.