2018

This has been an emotional year, to say the least. It started with a huge shift. Moving back to Michigan after 14 months of the most selfish thing I have ever done for myself. Some times were really great. Some times were really, really bad. Bad enough I moved home.
I moved home just in time to see my family through extreme hardship. My father almost died, and I did my best to hold us all together.
I thought I had met someone. They met someone else.
I then spent months being angry. Really angry. At others. At how I was the consolation prize, the after thought. Mostly I was angry with myself. Angry that I felt I needed the validation of any man to know my worth.
I started attending CoDA meetings and reading books and really embracing my codependency. Not as something to blame, but as a means to understand AND MAKE A CHANGE.
I started to get comfortable with making changes, saying no without feeling guilty, and beginning to make boundaries.

Then I met someone. I met someone who is kind, gentle, thoughtful, and very understanding of where I am coming from. My knee jerk reaction is to flinch at so many things... emotionally flinching if I make an intellectual mistake, having previously been looked down at, snubbed, and judged. Flinching if anyone orders a beer, anticipating the 8 to 10 that will follow, and the emotional abuse that follows on the heels of intoxication. Flinching if anything breaks, fearing the temper tantrums of yelling and stomping around that I had grown accustomed to.
These things don't happen. There are times I fear it's too good to be true. But I'll take it as long as I can have it!

I just put my dog down. Its hitting me a lot harder than I was anticipating. She was such a good girl.

So 2018 draws to a close similarly to how it started. Mourning the loss of something that was significant, while looking forward with hopeful optimism to what comes next.

I've cut ties with the past. I dont want to live there anymore. My future holds promise, but it's being present in the now that I'm really interested in.

A Sad Day

I put down my dog Butterscotch today. She was in my lap with a belly full of treats when she took her last breath. She had lost so much weight lately, I knew something was wrong.

Lung cancer. Both sides and extremely aggressive. So I decided to end her suffering and give her peace in dignity.

I was alone.

It's hard saying goodbye, even when you know it's the right thing to do.

I'm so tired now. My eyes are swollen from a years worth of tears I finally let myself cry.

This was an emotional week even before the dog died.

Im so blessed to have the people in my life that I do. I am loved, even when I feel unlovable.

Hurt

I'm having a hard time. A couple days ago I spent the night on the exes couch, as he had made plans to go out late. I agreed. In the morning when he woke up and came downstairs, he thought he would try to cuddle or something and sat on the couch next to me... right on my fused wrist. I yelled as it crunched and I involuntarily kneed him. Yesterday I was walking across some grass and slipped, dislocated my surgery knee. It hurt. Bad.

I'm covered in bruises and swollen injured joints and just feel broken.

I'm in a flare and my body is failing left and right. I cant pretend it doesnt hurt anymore. My whole body hurts.

I feel like a burden. A twisted, dysfunctional lump of unworthiness.

And there is nothing I can do about it.

Healing

Our being has a tendency towards wholeness and health. If you fall and scrape your knee, your body will heal itself. But first we have to clean the wound, and get all the dirt out, so our body can properly repair. In a similar way, our consciousness wants to heal itself, but it has a tendency to be overactive. Like dirt in a wound, the active mind prevents us from healing and coming into our wholeness. When we meditate and quiet our mind, and see things objectively, we begin the process of untangling our thoughts and cleaning our mental space so our psyche can begin it's healing process. As Rachel Naomi Remen once stated, "Silence is a place of great power and healing." So look to your practice as a restorative place, where you can start to heal wounds, new and old. Get silent, go within, and let the body and mind repair. 

I'm beginning to really understand how much healing can take place within silence. Often, I hide from it. This week I'm learning to embrace it. Rather than fussing and fretting about what everyone else is thinking or feeling, I'm focusing a little more inward, and pondering more on what I'm thinking and feeling! Crazy, I know! Now that I've identified some pretty toxic behaviors I subject myself too, I'm working on breaking away from those behaviors. Stepping away from the need to put myself down. Setting down the angry rocks labeled "abandonment" or "betrayal" that I have been hurling at phantom figures in my mind. Those figures just swirl away into mist as my stones wiz through them, simply a mirage. I'm expending energy STILL on being upset, angry, and hurt... and for what? It doesn't make me feel better. 

"It hurts because it mattered..."

Well I wish it didn't matter so much. I want to just let it all go. Release the negativity into the universe and have it fucking stay out there!! But that isn't really healing then, is it... I have to scrub the wound clean before it can really begin to heal. I've been stuck in the swearing because it fucking hurts phase long enough. Swearing and being mad and flailing around and poking at it doesn't heal the wound. Scrubbing it out, giving it time, and not fucking picking at it is what heals the wound. 

I have the rest of my life to look forward to. I'm not going to let a few minor setbacks derail my progress. I am the master of my fate.

And it's going to be incredible. 

Autoreactivity

Imagine for a moment, you've traveled up north for a family reunion. As you mingle with distant relatives you haven't seen in years, you're on your best behavior. Interactions are warm and polite. There may be awkwardness, annoyances, or differences in politics, but everyone keeps the conversation cordial. But it's a different story on the 3 hour car ride home with your partner of many years. Each of you can trigger the other into irritation or anger with the slightest thing. Perhaps their tendency to switch the radio station frequently or a habit of singing loudly and off key. In our closest and dearest relationships our patience dwindles, our reactivity heightens, and our worse behaviors come out. When our sibling or best friend pushes the wrong button, whether intentionally or not, we often react without thinking. We become defensive, impatient, or angry, and snarl back with a curt remark or a fuming email. And it can happen so fast it doesn't even feel like there was a millisecond to consider our reaction. Perhaps they'll forgive us, but if we keep this us, we risk damaging the relationship. Through mindfulness, in essence, we're training the brain to be less reactive. We're learning to become aware of our emotional responses and then to regulate them. So when we're triggered and about to react, there is an opportunity to tap into our practice. We can slow our breath, calm our simmering emotions, and find a more peaceful state from which to respond. As Ariana Huppington said, "We have little power to choose what happens, but we have complete power over how we respond." At first we might create only a sliver of a space between our trigger and our reaction, but over time this sliver becomes a crack, and then and inch, and then a space wide enough to stand. And from this space our response is calm, thoughtful, and wise. 

I've been avoiding writing. I've been avoiding thinking and feeling and grieving and growing. I've been avoiding holding myself accountable. I have been a listening ear, a coach, a support, to those around me, and I have been avoiding taking care of myself. It has been a relapse of sorts, but more so a surrender into my current state of depression. I have so many options ahead of me, and breaking free of my codependency means having to make those decisions for myself. It's a little daunting to be back in this space again, but I feel more comfortable this time around. More aware. More accepting. Its time to refocus on responding to my life from a place of calm. Releasing the chaos and negative autoreactivity...

Up to something

"That One Has Value"

My job is wrapping up. Last day is slated for the 31st. Of course there has been no clear communication from corporate about anything, so I'm just packing up the clinic like I have done for 2 previous clinics. It's pretty draining telling people we are closed, explaining we have to transfer care, and no I don't have a job over and over and over. I'm tired. Just... tired.

Today one of my favorite patients came in baring gifts of hugs and baklava. She was misty eyed and so gracious for the care that she received while she was our patient. As she was getting ready to leave I gave her a big hug. She turned to the director, holding back tears, and pointed to me. "That one... That one right there has value. Anyone who snaps her up will be so lucky to have her." I started to tear up. I couldn't help myself.

I have been working so hard to convince myself that I have value, that I am worthy, WITHOUT outside validation that I had been lacking... that to hear it without prompt, to hear it without my somehow trying to guilt or manipulate the words I've been dying to hear out of someone... It was offered freely and I didn't immediately question the motives or legitimacy of the compliment.

"That one has value."

It somehow felt very meaningful in recent moments of feeling like a failure.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my patterns. More like rituals that I have set for myself... that aren't exactly positive. I wake up and immediately check the blog of someone I once admired. I mentioned this a few posts ago. What I'm looking for, I'm not really sure. Seeing how he's doing? Searching for some kind of twisted validation that I even existed in their world? That I mattered? It isn't there. I don't know why I continue to look. Then I check his girlfriends blog. Searching for clues as to how she's so much better than me. She isn't. In fact, we seem to be a lot alike. Then I scour the MN ex boyfriends social media, looking for updates of locations he's checked into with his new girlfriend. Places we used to go. Things we used to do. I've been replaced completely, and yet I search for some kind of validation that I mattered. Again, it isn't there. It won't be there. I need to let go of the daily ritual of invalidation. These men don't love me. Don't value me. Don't give two shits about what I am up to, what I am struggling with, what I am facing on a daily basis. I have ceased communication with both of them... and yet... and yet... I still look.

What purpose does looking serve?

It's my drug. I look because being abused and overlooked is my high. I look because every ounce of invalidation is equivalent to a hit for me. Somewhere along the line, my fucked up brain decided that I wasn't worthy, and every time someone proves it, that cruel inner voice takes a long drag on that feeling and sighs out a smarmy "I told you so..."

"That one has value."

It was like I could feel that dark inner voice cringe and shrink back, lessening it's hold on me for just a moment. I could let it soak in and take a little comfort that someone recognized me deep down in there, and wasn't afraid to say it out loud, unprompted, unscripted.

I have value... and I'm working on learning to say it out loud to myself.