Saturday, October 7, 2017

New beginnings

The month of March was a month of many changes. I decided to follow Lent this year and gave up alchohol and meat - 40 days of giving my body a break from the routine intake of both seemed like a a grand idea. Coincidentally I also finished my last pill packet and was due to start again but life had other plans because my relationship of 3.5 years came to a crashing end on February 28th after  we watched Lion.

So on 1st  March I was meat, alcohol, pill and relationship free. Two by choice and the latter because he had been having doubts for a while about what he wanted in life and it became clear to him that the relationship was prohibiting him from his personal growth. I tried to fight but in the end had to accept that he needed this for himself and it was nothing personal. Easy to type that now that I've had some distance from it but at the time it felt as if my heart had been ripped out of my chest and then thrown onto a highway in peak hour traffic in Germany on the Aautobahn. I felt like all my dreams were shattered and there was no way I was going to make it through a minute let alone an hour.

Those were the internal feelings I did in fact continue with life - I tried my best to function despite the vacuum in the space where love once lived. I focused on all the dreams that were to evaporate. The unborn children and how lonely I would be without him by my side. I felt as if I had failed at love (again) and was sooo full of self pity and woe is me. I cried each time I told people the story. I cried each time I thought about the story. I cried when I deleted the photos of us from my phone. I cried when I looked in my cupboard and saw the dresses he'd recently bought me for my birthday....I did a lot of crying. I felt as if I were mourning the death of a loved one. I then got angry at myself for not being a better girlfriend. Then I got angry at him for putting me in that situation and then I felt sorry for myself again. I spoke to anyone who would listen about the pain and unfairness that had been thrust my way - my mom being my longest standing victim of woe stories.

I was not constantly a pain in the bum, there were many moments of acceptance, understanding, clarity but they were short lived between tears. I remember I had one day whereby I didn't cry for about 16 hours. And I was feeling bursts of happiness that were so beautiful amidst all the sorrow. Anyways to cut a long story short, on 31st March I made a decision to stop being a pain in the backside and stop with all the "luxury pain" there are people who are suffering atrocities on a daily basis that include absence of food, shelter, stability...not to mention others who are constantly exposed to death, war and disaster and there I was dying because a man whom I loved didn't want to be my life partner anymore. He never cheated on me, never beat me, never even said a bad word to me - he simply wasn't ready to take our relationship a step further. And then with the right neurons connected I woke up on Saturday feeling like a new person.

I had to put on my big girl shoes and go to Brisbane to speak at a Professional Development gathering for Queensland English Language schools. And Since that morning so much beauty has happened. Breaking free of the trap of self pity has opened up so many doors and it has only been three days. The realisation of how powerful our mind is has blown me away. I've theorised about it but I see now how easily one can fall into a trap of negative thoughts and how it can such you down into the pits...repeating the same negative story over and over again and giving no room for star gazing. I know that I'm not the first person to be left in the world and I certainly won't be the first.

Healing is a beautiful process. Falling in love with oneself is a gift. Friendship is magic.

(late post - written in April 2017)

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