In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
-Albert Camus
There have been dark times in my life.
When I look back I think I have always felt a certain pull towards melancholy. No times so great as two winters ago. I look toward an upcoming winter with a sense of dread because the experience was so dark that I wondered if i could ever feel happiness again. Each time the seasons change and a new winter approaches I wonder if it will come for me again - the shadow of it's massive hand an ominous reminder to feel an extra measure of gratitude for my freedom today.
At the very heart of my darkness was my unending grief and the sadness over the mess that was formerly my life. I was headed for divorce, I never thought It would be me. The "picture" of the world as I knew it was simply shattered, and its sharp pieces threatened to slice me open at every turn.
My life felt in shambles- my business had also joined the pile of rubble and i joined the ranks of millions of small business Americans who simply were not financially solvent enough to wage the war of economic catastrophe.
Truthfully the only way out for me was to give in to the exhaustion and spend endless days sleeping in my bed. I would fake a good mother's morning tasks and pull myself regretfully from my bed to get my kids fed and to school. I did not clean but for when someone was coming to the house (which was rare) and I did not leave the house except to grocery shop or take the kids to a friends home. I looked at myself in the mirror and recognized that I had become the classic poster child for any pharmaceutical giant who wanted to peddle the virtues of an anti-depressant. Meanwhile, mine had failed to help, and I did not even have the energy or will to go to a doctor, or make it any better. I simply wanted to die.
The worst part is that I told no one. I did not tell my friends, or my family. I went through the gestures that maintained their faith that life was "fine" and that all was well. It wasn't that I did not want to tell them... It was that if I were to open the vaults of my inner turmoil I felt I would spiral down even further, and as it was I felt that I was barely hanging on to my sanity and that one mis-step would land me on the eighth floor of someplace way nuttier than my own mind.
My father always used to say "What does not kill you, makes you stronger," but funnier yet was his expression:
"I was so afraid I was going to die from the pain, and then that changed to being afraid I wouldn't."
At some point I simply crossed some kind of invisible line where I began to want to be well, and some spark deep inside myself decided it was still willing.
I started with a visit to a well known acupuncturist who simply treated me with kind words and tiny pins that seemed to poke into the ocean of grief that lie below the surface. Those tiny holes must have somehow started the slow leak and the long process of "emptying" that had to take place in order for me to start from the beginning again.
From there I started to listen to audio books or books on topics that seemed to speak to me:
When Thing Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss PH. D.
and read bits at a time as I could digest them. These people who it seemed could reach through their text and softly touch the places that hurt the most inside my heart. The numbness I'd been feeling finally gave way to something else and the thing that I feared the most began to happen.
The tears seemed endless, and the emptying out that began led me on what felt like an endless journey into a hall of mirrors, and then tentatively toward healing- beginning yet again at the starting point of my childhood. DRATS. Back to the very place i was sure I had already exposed and recovered from..not so fast.
If life is a house than surely I had built mine on quicksand. The demolition process once again proved painful. Funny- I had considered myself so very evolved, and introspective having done lots of work and therapy over the years, and yet had failed to touch upon the very core of my own undoing. I'd gotten close.... close, but no cigar.
I've decided that self preservation and the ego has an amazing survival mechanism, and successfully keeps many of us from ever achieving real self actualization. Keeping the past in place is it's way of ensuring the illusion of security, identity, and self importance. It's amazing the lengths I was willing to go to NOT have to face my deepest insecurities. The unanswerable questions that threatened my ability to really embrace myself as I really am, and accept the limitations and fears that are exactly what make me beautiful...human.
The voice I believed was ringing in my ears all these years was in fact NOT really the voice of my mother, my father, husband, friends, lovers... but the relentless voice of someone who was never ever satisfied, and who chose relationships and experiences that would in-fact keep that ugly reality in place.
When i finally stopped to listen I heard something truly amazing. I heard a voice I did not even realize was at the dashboard of my life pushing all the buttons inside myself and tainting each experience and relationship with it's bad advice. I realized that the voice was MINE and that the way I spoke to myself inside, was a way that I would never ever even think to speak to ANYONE... not even my worst enemy.
The voice was unyielding, harsh, critical, alienating, aggressive, angry, threatening...abusive. It was the voice of self loathing.
My SELF had chosen this outcome in order to prove it's point which brings me to many conclusions, but one I feel compelled to share as it relates to my own heart of darkness....
I reached a point where like a child in the dark - no one was there to turn the light on for me.
There was only me.
I created constructs in my world to mask the truths that I did want to see. My shortcomings, faults, inadequacies, failed attempts, bravado, weakness, selfishness.... I did not want to own any of it.
Yes- this masking is what makes us human, but my challenge was understanding that it is only a mask and not the truth. When any of us are forced to stare into the heart of the darkness we have to face our worst enemy and either turn our backs to it or embrace it.
After all, it will either do one thing or the other to us mortal humans: break us, or enlighten us.
PS: Last week my brother reminded me of a song by Dar Williams that i gave him years ago. It was really beautiful, and seemed fitting for this post. I'd love any comments anyone is willing to share, and as always- THANK YOU for reading. I am truly grateful.
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