Continuing where I left off…

So what does this non-confrontational girl do when her life shatters around her and she’s too scared to pick up the pieces?  She runs away.

The Indiana girl who swore she’d never live farther than a couple hours away from her family packs up what’s left of her life and migrates 12 hours south to Louisiana.  Sometimes starting fresh is easier than cleaning up a mess.

We didn’t last long in Louisiana before we realized it wasn’t for us.  How we thought we could handle living away from the boys for an extended period of time is beyond us now.  Bad. Idea.  Within months, we knew we made a mistake.  We were going to move back home to Indiana, but then one thing led to another, and less than a year later, we found ourselves moving once again, this time to Asheville, NC.  Higher altitude and higher vibrations.  I truly believe that Spirit led us to Asheville knowing that it was the perfect place for us to heal and (for lack of a better expression) figure our shit out.  I couldn’t ignore the pain and confusion anymore.  I couldn’t put on that smiling face and keep running from my fears and pain.  I had to deal with it, and Asheville made sure that I did.

Feelings kept coming up in me like vomit, and I just wanted to spew the emotions out without having to think about cleaning up the mess because I had no idea where to start.  The first six months here, I buried myself in my work and ignored this dark cloud hanging overhead.  I lamented on my past and loathed my life because of it.  Instead of putting on my big girl panties and moving on, I was stuck in the sadness that was overwhelming my heart.  I felt that my pain was justified – I had a right to be miserable and depressed due to what had happened in my life and the current state of my familial relationships.  What I went through was pretty rough, right?  Terrible, mean things were said about me and the man I chose to be my husband by those I most love, and I couldn’t just let that go.  My family was my life and now I had no idea where I stood with any of them.  I felt betrayed.  I felt wronged.  So I was allowed to feel like crap, right?

Sometimes it seemed as if I desired the sadness.  It was more comfortable than the thought of me standing up for myself and speaking my truth.  After a couple of minor nervous breakdowns, I decided to quit my job, finish grad school, and live off financial aid as I tried to sort through my shit.  I dove heavily into the spiritual side of life – meditating with crystals, repeating mantras and affirmations, receiving Reiki treatments (energy healing), blessing and purifying my home with sage and San Palo, aligning my chakras with Tibetan singing bowls, not to mention a full feng shui-ing of my home and a complete astrological study of my personality – all in the hopes of healing my heart and getting some divine energy flowing.

But no matter how long I sat quiet and still in meditation, no matter how many mantras I repeated or gemstones I carried in my pocket, my heart was still heavy, my soul still burdened.  Reiki masters told me I was holding onto pain and betrayal in my heart and that my throat chakra was completely closed due to not speaking my truth.  I finally got to the point where I realized that none of these external things would do a damn thing if I wasn’t willing to release the past and the death grip that it had on my heart.