I felt the need to post today. I think I'm having a strange transcendental experience. I need to blog about it. I guess I'm hoping that if I just write, it will begin to coalesce into something I might actually be capable of verbalizing.
For the past few years I have had quite the traumatic, dramatic ride. I've been all flailing arms and stomping feet and gritting teeth. Unhappy about the way my marriage has turned out, restless, acting out, carrying on, jumping up and down, running in and out. Ruminating about a different life. Practicing the new one in my head, except it changed regularly. Unhappy that my "career" was still to be seen after years of pursuit. Unhappy that my dad has died and suffered terribly. Unhappy that my mom suffered terribly and is now very dependent on me. Yet, a fascinating thing has occurred - I feel fine.
It's as if I had been suffering from a horrible illness and had fevered delusions and sad declines but now I am recovered. I think I owe it all to a combination of therapy and the rediscovery of my Buddhist inner self. I've been reading Pema Chödrön's "When Things Fall Apart." Perhaps it too is responsible for this feeling of calm that has come over me. But I think it's more a matter of "when the student is ready, the teacher will come." I think I've been arriving at this point for a few months now.
I am still working on my voice and I have a few projects I'm attempting to put in motion. There is music I'm slowly learning despite the numerous interruptions in my schedule. I hope to speed up the process in the New Year when I'm done with the B.A. I've been completing. I am no longer unhappy in my marriage. I have been seeing my husband with a new found admiration and gratitude and my life doesn't have the grey pall over it that it seemed to have just a year ago. I have found a rare, rare thing. Acceptance. I don't know how long it will stay or if this is just a resting area on the way to some other state of being, but it feels good. It feels right. It's not a sad, "my life sucks but I think I'll keep it" acceptance. It's things-really-are-better-than-I-thought acceptance. I am living my life as I want. I am free to pursue my dreams. And whether or not any of those things pan out, I have the opportunity. That is an incredible gift.
And speaking of gifts, I finally love my voice. For years I fought with it and didn't think it was good enough or "right" enough or "worthy of being heard." So, part of my failure has come from hiding myself away in shame. Shame, if you do not know it, is a master, monster emotion. It is one of the most destructive of all emotions. Shame, I have come to realize, has been an undercurrent throughout many of my years. What an incredible waste! I know this now. But, alas, I couldn't know it until I knew it. And that time is now.
I love me. I finally do. I love me when I'm doing what I "should" and when I'm doing what I "want" and when I'm doing what I "need". I love me in all my unlabeled variations. Others can judge me if they want, they haven't walked in my shoes. I have only done what a flailing, shameful, scared woman would do. And now... well now maybe I will do less of that and more of what my true pure soul craves.
I feel that I am about to enter a period of using more of my energy to forward my true self and hopefully spend less time catering to all the things that steal me of my energy and authenticity. It doesn't make my life more perfect. But it makes me happier. And calmer. Imagine that.
