The Morning After

Today is the morning after my one year anniversary. When the announcement was made last year that I was to be the new "So and so" because of my talents of "X-Y-Z" I remember sitting there frozen. Feeling like a fraud. In a way I wasn't a fraud, because I had worked hard (by doing all the things I knew I should do) to get a position like this. But what felt fraudulent was all those steps I had taken, all those things I had done, had been, in a large part, carefully choreographed and orchestrated.

So what's wrong with that? For a long time I really thought there wasn't anything wrong with that. That this was how the world worked. You get somewhere, figure out how to play the game, play it, and then advance to the next rung of the ladder. Make more money, buy the dream home, frolic in the vacation time. Maybe this was the way the world worked. Heck, I believed it for a long time. And for many people they probably do believe it and go about their lives living it like this. But the difference between me and them is that the knot, that had formed in my stomach, as a result of living this way...well it was growing and becoming tighter. 

I felt that it had taken a hold of my innards and was tugging at everything-my stomach, my heart, my lungs. I was gasping for air, but there was less and less to be had. Finally, I felt so sick that I collapsed. My life collapsed around me and I didn't blink. I mourned and felt lost and felt hopeless and inadequate, but I didn't blink about letting go of it. It was a like a cancer that had gotten a hold of me that I now wanted to scape out of my body. So I let go of it all and held myself. 

Days passed. Huge chunks of time, where looking back, I can't remember what was accomplished. Most likely nothing because I sat there in my own headspace, with only my journal at times. Everything was so hard to do. Even preparing something to eat seemed like a mountain. The only piece of my life that I wanted to hold onto, even though I felt I had nothing to give to it or nurture it, was my relationship to my husband. 

Even though I wanted to tear everything in my life apart, piece my piece. Even though the tornado came through and whipped everything around and tore my heart to shreds. The one main reason I was able to gather everything and temporarily duck tape it together was because of the strength I received from the love we have. That love is what gave me the energy to get to the place of numbness. This place where the storm has passed and now the clean up and new beginnings will start. 

As I sit here this morning on this day after and feel the warmth of the sunshine through my large window I feel blessed. I feel blessed for the opportunities that life has ahead of me. I feel blessed for this year of madness that has passed. I feel blessed for the lessons that life has taught me these past ten years that I've essentially been on my own. 

I know what's next in my life...

The next phase is to know myself, to become whole, to start living the life I was meant to live, to be who I am and to trust and embrace all of this that we call the universe. Because without us it wouldn't be what it is and with it we wouldn't be who we are...

I am thankful for this morning after....