Unexpected Territory

"I can't say I wasn't hoping for it, but I didn't see it coming."
~Jessi Kirby~

I haven't written in a long time. For a lot of reasons. With everything that is going on in the world at large and our own worlds, we tend to get lost in details of life.

Sometimes those details are mundane. Raising a family. Working. Making a life. Paying bills. All too common in this day and age of being to connected to technology and spending time with people who see us far more than our family does...

And then sometimes those details are remarkable. Watching your children grow into amazing human beings of their own accord. Seeing the people you work with experience growth and change you never expected. Finding a place in the world you didn't know you could flourish in. Falling in love-really falling in love for the first time...with myself. And with someone whose heart matches my own.





When I started blogging, I was trying to make sense of the chatter that was in my head. There was a lot. I experienced a lot of what other people do when great change occurs in life. I was drowning in heartbreak. My family's. My children's. But, especially my own. It kept me up at night. The pain of divorce, being penniless and trying to create a life out of nothing was overwhelming. And, so...I wrote.


I wanted to stop writing at one point, because I didn't think it was doing anyone any good. But, I was met with resistance. Friends. Family. And my own. I always found comfort in the printed words on page. For a little while, I could transport my thoughts out of my head in into type that expressed a lot of things. Mainly the feelings I had about myself . Misplaced feelings, perhaps. But they were mine.





I rebuilt myself. I had no choice but to. My livelihood and my children's lives depended on it. I worked harder than I knew I could work. It was common for me to work 60-80 hours a week. I was physically exhausted and somehow the stress got easier to bear. I wrote my feelings out because I didn't have the time to interact with people in a meaningful way with the time I had left in the day. And I craved that. Everyone craves that deep, meaningful human interaction.


Life got easier. More and more opportunities came from the work I did. I took them. Life continued to get easier. I reveled in the peace I was gaining in my life. In my heart. In my head. I opened myself up to the possibility of meeting someone I could share my life with. Which has been incredibly hard for me, given the experiences I had with The Dreaded Ex. Whatever personal thoughts, dreams or ambitions I shared with him, he used as a weapon to hurt me later when it was convenient for him and when he wanted to "manage me". I don't share a lot about the experience I had with him, unless it's with my patients. I only share those things when I know it may help someone else. Otherwise, it's counterproductive and makes my foundation shaky. I don't like shaky foundations...shaky foundations in my experience, lead to the yelling and trying to smooth things over.


People saw me as being a strong woman. Sure, I guess I can be. But, strength for single mothers rebuilding their lives is a necessity. It's not anything special or unusual to us moms and dads that HAVE to do for our family. I don't like praise or attention for that. It was plain, hard survival for a few years. Pragmatic. Purposeful. Intentional movement. Economy of motion was the tenet I lived by for awhile. I took a little time for myself. Seeing concerts with friends. Learning to be comfortable in my own skin. Coming back out of the insecure, quiet shell I had lived in for 20 years. Dating the occasional non-serious, "it's not going anywhere", emotionally inaccessible and very safe man.

"But, instead of what our imagination makes us suppose and which we worthless try to discover, life gives us something that we could hardly imagine."

~Marcel Proust~

 

The life changes I made enabled me to build something for myself for the first time. Something that was all mine. Something I could be proud of. The mean-spirited voice in my head that told me I would never succeed at anything I would do, that I would be a failure was quieted. Each act of success was my silent "kiss my ass" to that voice. Everything I gained, I became stronger in spirit. In fortitude. Physically. Emotionally. And, most importantly, spiritually.

The thing that helped me the most throughout my life has been adversity. It has shaped me to become more compassionate, more loving, more giving and forgiving. It has allowed me to love unconditionally. It has allowed me to understand the limitless of spirit and the limitations of being human. It has allowed me to understand that love does conquer all. Maybe not in the ways that we think, but in the ways that matter.

 

Somewhere along the way, I attained some wisdom. Not much, but enough to know what are the most important things in life. Family. Purpose. The immense joy and pain that love can bring you. And the incredible potential we all have in all of us to succeed in ways we have never imagined.

 

So, as I put these words to this page, I am confident in knowing that whatever life brings me, I can handle it. We just need the courage to go past our perceived limitations and use our imagination, our indomitable spirit to discover what we can't possibly imagine for ourselves. But, we need to get out of our own way.

The love I have discovered in the deep well of my own humanity has saved my life. It is mixed with experience and pain. It is mixed with indescribable joy. I longed for a life of mundane normalcy, but I have discovered that there is no normal. We all have scars. We all have strangeness. We are all unique. I plan on discovering that for the rest of my life in any way I can.

My one hand will be reaching for the unimaginable, but the other will be firmly held by those that love me and I love in return. My children. My friends. My family. The Man in My Life who has opened my heart and given me that which I never expected to get.

I am in unexpected territory. I am desperately, uncontrollably and unimaginably in love with life. The good. The bad. The ugly. And the truly remarkable. So beautiful it can't be captured in a picture or pretty words.