Letting go…
is definitely a process. A very slow process.
I thought that I had faced my feelings. In retrospect I see now that I let keeping the peace in my family take precedence.
Therefore, I set my feelings aside. I didn’t bury them again, I just put them in another room. I compartmentalized my world. Which put my whole life on autopilot. I didn’t think about where I had to go, I just went. I didn’t think about what I had to do, I just did it.
There were brief moments of self-awareness when I spoke without over-thinking and felt like an almost genuine person, but these moments were far and few between. Most times I was just performing my roles of wife and mother robotically. I was very good at both.
These performances left me feeling like a shell of a person. Like I was being controlled by someone very far away. Little did I know that that someone was me.
On the outside I was flourishing. I was exercising, eating right, and being social. Yet, I was in a precarious internal state. And this was when the worst thing that could of happen happened.
He said the words again.
Stuck in the Moment
I don’t remember the circumstances, if I brought up the initial conversation, or if he had said something related to that day that triggered me, but I do remember that he confirmed that that’s indeed what he had said.
I had placed the event and my pain in another room and locked the door.
His words broke down that door, came rushing out of that room, and knocked me down as if it had just happened.
Refusing to acknowledge the event gave me a false sense of control. Denying it blinded me to the fact that I was holding on so tightly and intimately that it had become a part of me.
I was unaware that I left myself stuck in that moment in time unable to process my feelings.
And just because you don’t think or talk about something that hurt you does not always mean that you let it go.
Here’s the thing. I knew without a doubt that I wanted, needed (at the time) him to think of me, not the prettiest, but at least pretty. Saying that I was fatherless and pointing out that the man that was around didn’t think much of my appearance either were only excuses.
I had treated myself so poorly by letting another imperfect human being point out my flaws.
I could have revealed my feelings to him expressing how angry I was. Resolved to move on. Or surrendered knowing that it was a battle that I could not win accepting our relationship in a realistic way.
Either would have enabled me to move on in some way.
Being a Victim Is a Choice
Instead, I stayed on the battlefield and let myself be slain over and over and over again. I sacrificed myself. Stepped onto the pyre unaided, laid myself down, and waited to feel something other than pain.
I chose to be a victim because it allowed me to believe that it was acceptable to stay with him. More so gave me the right to be in perpetual pain, which was something I was used to.
It didn’t even feel like a choice; he told me what I had already chosen to believe.
It was a belief that I had arrived with; carefully folded and packed in my suitcase when we had first moved in together.
I couldn’t change his viewpoint, so I would have to change the beliefs that I assigned to his words.
That became the beginning of letting go.
“If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will grow stronger and return.”
Deepak Chopra, The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore
“If you don’t realize a deja vu, you have to realize you’re creating a deja vu.”
Nusam Wele Ama Ina
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