Field Notes: On Beginnings and the Spaces We Build to Hold Ourselves

On beginnings, and the spaces we build to hold ourselves

There was no clear beginning to this.

No defined moment where something shifted cleanly from one state into another.
Only a gradual weight. A quiet build of things not quite sitting right, thoughts moving too quickly, emotions arriving too fully.

What it would later become known as was Borderline Personality Disorder.

At the time, it was just lived experience.
Unnamed, but deeply felt.

This journey began there, within that space.

Not with a brand, or an idea of building something outward, but with a journal.
A place to put thoughts when they had nowhere else to go.
A space to create without expectation.
A space that did not ask for coherence, only honesty.

The pages held everything.
Fragments, contradictions, moments of clarity that would not stay for long.

Over time, something subtle began to form.
Not structure in the traditional sense, but a rhythm.
A way of sitting with what was there, rather than trying to escape it.

Rambling grew from that.

What once existed as something internal, something held quietly and closely, has since opened outwards.
It now sits in a more open space.
A more reflective space.

A space that looks beyond the self.

Towards the land.
Towards the idea of what can be left behind, not just as product, but as impact.
For the earth, and for the people who move through it.

The mind does not become still.
It continues to shift, like weather passing across open ground.
Unpredictable at times, heavy at others, but no longer entirely without place.

There is ground beneath it now.

This is written during BPD awareness month.
Not as explanation, and not as resolution.

Just as a note.

Some things are not fixed.
They are carried.
And in time, they are shaped into something that can exist beyond the self.