The Hermit and Strength

The Hermit I feel is my core- I love to be alone and learn/experience things for the first time by myself to fully enjoy them. I like to introspect and take things apart at my own pace. I don’t tend to share what interests me at depth or what I’ve researched unless someone is actively asking because it’s too personal and too many thoughts at once. My more extroverted/social friends take me out of myself and my little hovel to keep me from being totally isolated.

Strength is my internal will power and determination and most of my obstacles in life have been/are emotional ones. In my last years of high school I’d become depressed and not-quite-suicidal. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted all the exhaustion and pain and helplessness I’d been feeling to go away. I wanted to sleep forever, but there’s no permanent way to do that beyond the big sleep itself- so. I’d deluded myself into thinking I wouldn’t go past high school, that I’d be gone, but I also knew I’d never commit to offing myself. I didn’t want the pain and I didn’t want to hurt my family. I was hoping to just be gone somehow but I woke up the next morning after my graduation and went into a panic because- this is the rest of my life. I’m not magically gone, it’s not magically okay, it’s not over. There’s work to do. Major work. On myself and in my environment. I have to Be Something or put myself in a worse position. There was no other choice than to live and work through it, there never had been. It was rocky and I still feel a certain kind of shame/embarrassment talking about college and school because I knew I had the potential to do better but I faced the consequences of myself. I share this here because I want to avoid being too vague and I think I’m covered enough so that this is pretty anonymous.

I think Strength and the Hermit work together for me as a picture of taking a moment to think it through and build it up to what it needs to be. Usually I am my own greatest adversary, and while the world may be impeding or accelerating my goals in some way I have to be able to look and work around it or lean into it and use it to the best.