Sunday AM or more precisely PM as it is one minute past noon. I awake from much needed sleep. I am feeling light and breezy and excited. I walk through campus to forage for coffee. I feel as personally connected to UM-Missoula campus as I did to UVa-Charlottesville . Yes there is the geographic similarity of being nestled between kind, lovely mountains. It is remarkable. It took me 4 weeks to acclimate last summer to where I was in place and culture, and within a day of return, I am happy. I am home.
Last year I struggled as the Chameleon Girl strived to fit. But she could not. No matter what I sought - the essence of myself was wrought of Manhattan and the South, there were strands of my soul that would always be of those places that could not be covered over or denied. The First Year of the Creative Pulse on campus was the first time, I had to adapt to being Me - and not some chameleon chimera of myself. I was “out of the closet”.
Ergo - University of Montana is now associated with being free. I know the lightness I felt when I woke up this morning was the absence of not being burdened with dread of assuming Chameleon Girl’s role of the day. It was not necessary. I have for so long been playing roles to fit in that do not commend themselves well to my temperament or my dreams. The challenge to come is to give myself the permission to abandon the Chameleon Mask anywhere, especially in my ordinary life. To feel as free to be Me anywhere as I now feel here in Montana.
How to actively mantain myself without slipping back into the carbonite. Where does it come from?
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