Head above water? Today’s reflections

This recovery journey of mine is so goddam choppy at times. Lately I have been glimpsing sight of dry land beyond the ocean of tears and grief I have been wading through or nearly inundated by after getting free of that last painful relationship where I kind of turned myself inside out and got more lost giving parts of myself away. I still used to hear his voice inside my head about 4 years out of it repeating all the unkind things and I re borrowed a book by a therapist from the library I found very helpful and read part of a few years ago which talks of how some of us internalise voices from parents which are anything but loving and often rest on us measuring up not to our own true selves but to socially imposed ideals or edicts. People who were not validated emotionally in childhood really struggle and often we are too ‘nice’ and compliant because we got shamed into wining love by performing or developing false beliefs that who we are is not good enough for anyone or anything.

I am also in the midst of reading a very confronting novel at the moment about a woman who loses herself to an emotionally empty relationship and cannot connect with her husband either in terms of giving and receiving love due to the early loss of her mother and a father who was then out to lunch and could not help her work through her pain. It was making me cry today as things have got topsy turvy again on the Scott front and its doing my head in. I have been helping this guy for well over a year now and the bloody goal posts keep getting changed which destabilises me every time. That said I believe the Universe is ultimately kind so maybe there is a very good reason things are not working out with Uranus having stationed backwards a short while again after hitting the exact degree of my Aquarian Moon by a square (challenging) aspect. Scott seems to be personifying the Uranus energy sent to kick me out of my (at times) defensive rut.

I just took myself off to sit in the car and feel the sunshine because often I feel better away from my house. I thought of how I long to have a break away after 8 years of living in the same town doing the same things day after day. I do find moments of great comfort in my life now but I have this dream of travelling to New York, I have had it for a while and there is a chance I could really manifest that later in the year if I let this thing with Scott go finally.

Nevertheless I found myself crying because since Mum died Scott has been the most consistently ‘there’ person in my life. We usually talk 6 days a week up to three times a day, admittedly via text but I was thinking today even with all the money stress how that has given me a sense of hope and some kind of holding over the wash up of Mum’s death when those I thought I had strong connections to have been revealed as those I only have a very troubled or superficial connection with at best.

I count my blessings though. I do have a lot to be grateful for and even if things fell apart with Scott I know there would be a new beginning for me laying in some other direction because I would make it for myself after figuring out what I wanted it to be. I believe that surely all of this healing, feeling and growth I have been doing over the past 8 years is really bearing fruit. I have been in my chrysalis for some time now and at times I feel my wings slowly unfurling due to all the challenges and issues and struggles I undergo. I believe that these challenges and our wounds are given to us to shape ourselves become more rounded and grounded. I feel that, as Marianne Williamson writes, pain can be a great messenger or teacher and in a society that we try to numb pain we end up repeating mistakes, living in denial and failing to transform. That is why I am not such a fan of medical pain relief, I have seen it destroy too many lives.

Anyway today I felt myself hit by another wave that seemed to want to take me under after a text from Scott, but I am bathed, dressed and have got myself going and I am writing about it which helps me to externalise. I am a little anxious to not have the ‘container’ of therapy over the next 3 weeks but I am sure I will be okay. Maybe this time out is a preparation for the day I finally feel strong enough to leave therapy behind. I don’t know. But at least for now I am breathing and feel like my head is above water.