Notes Along The Journey: August

I keep wanting to be someone that I'm not yet. I want to be through this stage of healing where everything is about how hard it is to get through the day. Where all of my energy goes towards the things that help me to maintain my sanity. I want to have the emotional energy to invest in my world, to educate myself, to step beyond this story of trauma and recovery. To get to that place where who I am is healthy.

It infuriates me that I'm not there yet. It sickens me how self-absorbed my world is much of the time. And this isn't me going on a rant against myself. This isn't some passive aggressive victim plea for you to build me up. This is the truth. The truth of where I am right now. I'm in the middle. The in-between. And I've written about it before and I'm going to have to keep writing about it.

Writing about the struggle to not give in to the old ways that allowed me to survive. Yet also not using energy I don't have to uselessly fight things that take time to change. It's living in this place of accepting the now without losing hope for the not yet that I'm moving towards.

This week has been a week of being reminded of how bad it was last August. I don't want to confess how many seasons of Stargate Atlantis I've watched (three and a half) or how little I've accomplished from my to-do list for the week (none of it). But this is my reality. For today. I can beat myself up for it. Which I have been doing, at least a little bit. Even to type this I had to wrap my wrists up so that the pain from the weather changes doesn't keep me from being able to use my hands. I'd love to know why my joints ache like this. I struggle to not feel betrayed by my body and wonder if this is my body punishing me for all the ways I didn't care for it until this past year. I don't have answers. And if you've been reading here for any length of time, you know how much I hate not having answers.

But. I made it almost two weeks into this month before I ended up in bed unable to function. That's two week I didn't get last year. I'm still able to write, although really I'm not entirely sure what value my words have to anyone else right now. I'm still writing. Still pushing publish. I haven't shut the world out or turned into a zombie. It's not as much progress as I want. This inching forward one exhausting step at a time feels ridiculous. Yet it's going forward. For the first time since I can remember I'm not stalled out just because of the calendar. That's never happened. All the work I'm putting in, being self-absorbed and micro-focused on my own healing, on my own becoming, is paying off.

So I'm going to keep showing up to whisper into the vast void of the internet. I choose to show up in my own life, as best as I can because I know that on my worst days, I need to read, to hear that others choose to show up and stare their dragons in the face. Your dragons probably don't look like mine. I'm going to tell you this anyway - you are not alone. I see you showing up, fighting to hold the scraps of yourself in the face of overwhelming odds. I hear you. You are not alone. (and neither am I)

Notes Along the Journey: On Hiding, Fear, and Vulnerability

I'm trying something new. Attempting to allow my brokenness to be seen and honoured, without devolving into living out of that space where I can only see myself as "broken girl".  My heart is filled with emotions that I can't quite connect to. I see them as a swarm of bees. They might give me honey; it's more likely I'll get stung half to death.

The aftermath of my parent's visit is daunting. Between the grief and the hard realizations I don't want to get out of bed ever again. I'm a little kid who is hiding under the table, hoping someone will come find me because I don't know that I'm allowed to stop hiding. I don't know yet that I can take my own hand and leave my hiding places behind. This is so damn scary. I don't acknowledge that for myself nearly enough. Sharing myself, getting vulnerable, it's a BIG deal.

In sharing myself, in being vulnerable, I'm breaking every rule, spoken and unspoken from my growing up years. Every fear comes back to being seen, to someone finding out. Keep silent, keep still, don't draw attention to yourself because then someone might question what's going on and investigate the family.

I forget to give myself grace in this process. I forget the fear that I was born into. The many ways that fear has shaped and moulded who I am. It's been a constant drumming in my blood. Even after I left and was handed freedom. I'm still learning to live out that freedom.

And living out that freedom, it starts with connecting to that swarm of bees. Because those are MY feelings and my feelings, they matter. It matters that I'm grieving the lack of warmth and connection with my Mom. It matters that I'm angry at being required to show love to someone who has shattered me with years of abuse. It matters that I'm triggered and scared still that I will turn around and find them here still. Those feelings, they matter. They aren't pesky flies that need to be shooed away.

I want to throw myself back into day to day life, to pick up where I left off before their visit. I can't seem to do that. It's all I can do to crawl out of bed and survive through another day. It's all I can do to choose the next right thing, to take one step forward and not focus on the bathrooms that still haven't been cleaned, the piles of art journalling things all over the floor, the stacks of books that I want to read, but just haven't had the focus to settle in with, the dishes stacked and piled competing with the plants for counter-space. Because my next right thing for this moment is to give myself all the permission to sit here and write. It is enough. The other things, those will get done, but in this moment, I don't need to hide my feelings behind cleaning.

Notes Along the Journey: Interfaith Marriage

His lack of faith doesn't change that this is the man I trounce at cribbage. The one who vacuums our floors because the vacuum cleaner hates me. This is the man who texts to let me know he's running late because he remembers my irrational fears that he'll leave me or die unexpectedly.

This is still the man who held me through nights of endless flashbacks. The one who bound the wounds I inflicted on myself. He was the voice of reason in the middle of my insanity and despair.

He has struggled to face his past, to pursue his own recovery this past year and a half to give our marriage a fighting change. He's been the one to go toe to toe with me, holding his own, holding us when I was ready to walk away.  The one who has fought to take down his walls and share his heart, even as every protective instinct screamed for him to run and hide.

His rejection of the Divine doesn't change these pieces of who he is.

AND

None of these things change how I feel. Betrayed. Angry. Confused. Grief-stricken. It doesn't change my need to scream that this is not how the story is supposed to go. There isn't room for one more plot twist. It feels like the cruellest of ironies. As I have begun to find my footing in my faith again, to find glimpses of hope in how I could be part of community, he has slipped further away.

The loneliness threatens to drag me under. There are a few brave women I have found who are talking about this. I'm grateful for their words, their stories.

It's hard not to wonder where did I fail, to not demand an answer as to why God is passionate and intentional about pursuing my heart yet seems to not give a shit about my husband's.  That sounds like the God of my childhood, not the Divine being that I've grown to know and love. In all of this though, I feel held. I have a deep knowing that this story isn't over. I don't know the ending, but I know that honesty is necessary for growth.

I'm left in the same place I was before this bombshell - learning to love my husband in ways that are healthy and sustainable for both of us.