We all have pasts - some good, some bad, mostly a combination of events that stack up over the years and shape the person we are to become as grown-ups. I hope I never finish growing up because after the last couple of weeks I see that I still have a lot of shaping to do and don't want the construction and remodeling to ever finish!
As you all have read in previous entries, I came from an emotionally and mentally destructive marriage - from the age of 17 when I met him, until we went our separate ways just over 5 years ago - I went from a self-confident young woman with places to go and things to accomplish, to being caged in an overweight and unhealthy body with my emotions screaming out for freedom from the oppression that was my life. Not a day went by when I wasn't berated, disrepected or in some way made to feel that I was so much garbage, but I was so used to it that it had gotten to the point I didn't even notice. I went about my days commuting and working to support my family because my ex refused to get a real job and be a man. I lived in an exhausted fog, existing on barely 4 hours of sleep a night, and I felt lucky on those nights when he didn't wake me up at 2 a.m. for sex that I didn't want when I was that tired, followed by a spoonful of Ben & Jerry's shoved into my face. When I protested that I didn't want nor need the ice cream, but craved sleep instead, the abuse would heap upon me until I was in a state of near hysteria and over time it became auto-pilot to just eat the darned ice cream so I could get back to sleep. Thank God for the ferry commute or I would never have gotten any uninterrupted sleep. Oh, and a side note, the ice cream abuser? Spent years griping that I was "fat and freaking ugly" even while sabataging my every effort for healthy eating.
During those years I pushed much of the hurt into a little box and hid it in the back of that shadowy closet in my mind, adding to it as things would happen that I just couldn't deal with, until the lid to the box was having a very hard time staying closed! I added betrayal of so called friends, disappointments in things I didn't accomplish, sadness over losses of loved ones, and dreams that I assumed that I was doomed not to achieve to the box. If I listened I could sometimes hear the hinges on the lid creaking as I sat on it to squash it closed. I had become very efficient at turning a deaf ear though, tuning out extraneous voices or events so I could focus instead on projects or thoughts I chose to focus on. It haunts me sometimes to this day, this "ability" to tune out. Sometimes I accidentally tune out people I shouldn't, and don't want to tune out! My loving husband for one! Sorry R!!! I truly don't mean to do that to you, but old habits are so difficult to break. Please remember, I'm a work in progress and have you to thank for much of that progress! The horrible thing about the abuse and pushing it away is that it is so easy to put on a happy face and think that all is right with my own little world. I could go through all the motions, do all the right things, be following whatever set of guidelines I had decided to follow, but inevitably nothing turned out as I'd planned for I hadn't dealt with the overflowing box in my closet.
Praise God this has changed! A couple of weeks ago that box came bursting open, shoving open the closet door and spilling out many of those painful moments and memories into the sunlight of my concious mind. The pain was nearly enough to collapse me where I stood, but with the help of R, my dear friend S, and of course the Lord, I cried my way through it, finally admitting to myself that I had become so used to defeat that it had become my way of life. The horrible admission that I didn't feel that I deserved happiness, health or to even lose the weight that was holding me in place like concrete shoes, exploded in front of me. My AHA moment had happened. I've had many of them in the last few years, but this one was a doozy. I had thought that R was just saying all the positive things about how I could do whatever I set my mind to, how I was beautiful, how I was wonderful, how I can achieve anything, were just things he had to say because he loved me, but he couldn't possibly mean them, right? After all, I wasn't worthy! I wasn't worthy of fidelity, loyalty, kindness or love for all of my adult life til I met R! Why would I be worthy of someone this amazing and special? Because I am!!! That's why!
God created me in His image and I was tarnishing my own value by believing the words and abuse of someone who was so much acid to my life, to my confidence and to my very existence. So out of the darkness and into the Light I emerge, new, learning to be confident and to appreciate that I do deserve to feel this way, and to be as healthy and happy as God created me to be.
What's hiding in your closet that's holding you back from being the best you that you can be? Might be a good time to find out!
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