Re-emerging

oh boy...nobody faint...it's been 3 months since I have been able to find it in me to write for public consumption.  I've done plenty of journaling over the course of the last few months, but letting anyone into my head has felt like a scary proposition.  Do you ever feel like you are going nuts?  I have spent the last few months stuck in my head.  In general, I think I am a pretty quiet minded person.  It's not that I don't process things or think about stuff, I just don't tend to get so preoccupied with my thoughts that I am distracted from what is going on in front of me.  Over the course of this fall, I felt like my spinning just began to consume me.  I felt lost in my head much of the time, watching the same thoughts pass through my mind day in and day out.  Don't ask me what they were, because I'm not even sure I could tell you, I don't really know.  What I do know, is that I began to feel very lonely, despite having plenty of people in my life.  I began to sink deeper inside myself and found myself struggling with the same old stuff.  One evening I spent about 3 hours reading my old journals, from 15+ years ago.  I cringed as I could see many of the same exact patterns playing out in my mind today.  I thought I had purged myself of much of that baggage and have to admit I was more than a bit disappointed to realize I am still doing the same work.  What is it that makes us hold so tight to those destructive thought patterns?  After beating myself up over it for an evening, I began to think maybe we are like onions.  We just keep peeling back these layers, they don't really look different, the layers, but we get closer to the core the more we pull them back.  I guess that is just what I am doing, moving closer toward my Self (you know the one with the big S).
After the journey back in time with these journals, I told my husband about feeling lonely.  I can see it's because I begin to hide my Self from those I love.  I put the masks on that give the impression all is well and I stop sharing what is really going on.  I've been peeling the masks off and my mind seems to have a little more space in it and I am feeling a little lighter.
I don't think it is coincidence that I feel this way during a time when the darkness is overtaking the light in nature.  I think this season gives us the opportunity to be reflective, to go inside and see what is left to heal, to repair, to rebuild, to recharge... and hopefully re-emerge a better version of our self.