The Journey

Written May 23rd, 2023

He was the most beautiful escape. In a vortex of recovery and growth and inner work and stumbling and scrounging and healing and looking all about me frantically to get my bearings, he became a central point, a post onto which I could fix my gaze and all my attention.

For just a moment — five, maybe six, weeks — I stepped out of it all. I entered another realm where my heart and my body came back to life. It was the end of Ocean City all over again. I got swept up in it and I did NOT want to come back to solid ground. Not yet. I could have stayed in that wave of warmth and passion and love so much longer if he’d’ve let me.

But like all waves, this one peaked, crested and immediately crashed into the hard earth leaving me feeling barren and bruised from head to toe. I understand it better now. I can see how precious that escape from all the pain and turmoil of recovery was for me. I was already at a point of burn out with it, desperately wanting to just move on to a “normal” life. My romantic affair afforded me the reprieve I greatly needed. For that, I am so grateful.

It took weeks for me to get my bearings again, to come back to myself. The grief and loss were so intense, it consumed most of my waking moments like white noise humming in the background of my mind. It felt so fatal, as if goodness and happiness and warmth and comfort and love were simply not meant for me. It was hard for me to imagine ever experiencing that again.

But I slowly began to emerge. I spent more weeks grieving my loss than I’d actually spent in my two-minute relationship. By force of will, I slowly clawed my way back out of depression and despair. I began to remember me. I realized that I’m the one who still gets me, at the end of the day, and that’s the greatest prize of all. Without conceit, I remembered that I am the source of all the warmth, fun, laughter, joy, affection and Love that I experienced with him. It came from me and still lives within me.

He was a beautiful, open receptor for all that goodness and a gorgeous mirror to shine it all back to me, but I can’t lose what lives indelibly within me.

With that new awareness, I began to open my mind back up to the reality that all that beauty, passion, love and fun would as yet still be received by another beautiful soul, and at some point, more permanently so. In the meantime, I can learn to be both the giver and the receiver within myself. It’s not so very hard. I’ve done it before. I just forget.

When I accept and embrace all of that greatness and goodness within myself, that is when I am in my power. That is when I become unstoppable again. That is when I am irresistible to myself and others. That is the sweet spot.

I am stepping back into my power now with as much conviction and gusto as I can muster. I am remembering the road behind me that brought me to this point and which galvanized me into the beautiful, glowing soul I am now. I am remembering ME, including all the painful past that I spent those few, blissful weeks forgetting. They were blissful in the temporary escape they provided, but they were not grounded and I paid the price for that upheaval. I got lost in the waves, pulled under by the riptide and tossed about until I thought the currents would pull me apart. Through this, I learned my susceptibility to the draw of the wave and the importance of learning, somehow, to keep my two feet on the living ground.

The one lingering thought that nags at me still is an omniscient feeling of inconclusiveness. It haunts me. I have done my best to push it away, back out of my mind, but it continues to float back up to the surface. I both fear and long for its implications. I fear any further upheaval, turmoil and pain, but I long for finality, conclusion and a sense of peace. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it is but wishful thinking from the parts of my heart still clinging to the peak of that wave. Perhaps. There is nothing for me to do, either way. Only time will tell.

Written July 23rd, 2024

Sometimes, when you’re headed for a major crash but you don’t have the strength or wisdom or guts to change directions, Life will pull the ripcord for you. When Life takes this step on your behalf, the experience can feel brutal. The whiplash is excruciating and the sudden pull back? Devastating. But Life, God, the Universe – It has your back. What you don’t realize yet is that It just saved your ass.

There’s a choice I have to make in the midst of facing this reality. I can choose to resent the interruption, the interference, unwilling to see or acknowledge the reality of my imminent crash-inducing situation. OR, I can choose to accept the intervention as a kinder, gentler alternative to the course I had chosen for myself. To choose the second option takes wisdom, insight and strength. It has taken me awhile to come around to seeing things through the lens of the second option.

There is no escape from the work of Life, if you choose growth. There is no way around the dirty, harrowing, dismal trek through our own worst nightmares and inner enemies. It is the way of the secret warrior. There are precious few accolades awaiting from the outside world.

I wish I could tell you that having finality, a conclusion, hurts any less. I cannot. But seeing as how I’ve been through this upheaval before and come out the other side (many times), I can at least report (to myself, if no one else) that the dawn will break again. True to my word and to my process, I will honor the dark and I will do the work of trudging through the pain, but I WILL live to see the sun shine once again.

And on that, I will hang my hat.