Quote of the week.

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live"
-Dorothy Thompson

Change of Heart.

Years ago, I married the love of my ripe-old-age-of-twenty five life. He stood before me, sobbing uncontrollably in front of a hundred or so of our friends and relatives. His love for me at the time was unwavering. He adored me. He loved me. I was his third wife.

I had been privy to all his faults and flaws prior to my tipsy nuptials. During our time as husband and wife, I was miserable but unable to let him go. I thought I knew what I wanted and tried to be a wife. Think, Martha Stewart meets the Jekyll and Hyde in female dossiers. I had no prior stable marriage model. My father was gone before I was seven and had his own bouts of infidelity. I was a young girl who married for love. Married without any knowledge of the work and commitment it takes to actually beat the odds of divorce. And I was blindsided because I loved him so very very much. Throw in the fact that we drank almost every night and you have a very volatile combination of emotions.

Soon after one hell of a wedding, my marriage began it's long demise. Infidelity. Abandonment. Lies. Love gone horribly wrong. And suddenly, I was an overweight, burned out advertising executive with a more serious drinking problem and baggage packed full of crap. All before my 27th birthday. When I came home and my husband was gone, I secretly wasn't surprised. However, I was crushed. My heart was broken because I had been abandoned by the one person I thought would keep me afloat in my faltering emotional life.

And the healing began at a snail's pace. I woke up. I got sober after fifteen years of drinking to excess. I began my writing career and soon became a published author. I was featured in Glamour, Marie Claire and had my art and writing splashed around the sobriety world. I returned slowly to the corporate world of advertising and rebuilt bridges that I had almost burned from scorned experience. And while I poured my heart onto my website about the trials and tribulations of my broken heart, I, again, secretly thought that the day would come that my betrothed and I would be reunited.

That day came about five years too late. Three weeks ago, I went to see him at his "home" with another woman and their child. His "home" sits upon the same sandy soil that I had spent my childhood with my father. My life was spent there, on a skydiving drop zone, with all the dysfunction and instability that you can only IMAGINE you'd want to live in. I had lived it in my youth and married it in my adult years. And here I was, five years removed from my ex and a world away from my childhood.

We embraced, we cried, we laughed. We walked the same steps that I had taken twenty five years prior. And during this time, I looked around the pictures and letters in his home that had remnants of where my life had once been. The people we knew and loved. The places we had been to. But it was different this time. I was no longer in the pictures. They were all part of a life that I no longer belonged to and I quickly saved myself and fled before the pain in my heart resurfaced. I was so proud of myself for letting go.

But, that admiration I felt for myself quickly turned to self deprecation. In the weeks leading, the promises got deeper.....All I would have to do was wait two years for him to take care of things in his present life and we could be married again in Big Sur, the place we had spent such a romantic time in our lives. In two years, he promised us a house, a new marriage and a family. In two years, we would have this reunion of spirits and live out the rest of our days together. And the letters, phone calls and subsequent meeting all pointed towards this life of complete bliss.

Yesterday, we sat in a park, not far from the ad agency I had returned to and the career that I had become so successful. Here he was, sitting in front of me telling me every single word and scenario that I had hoped and waited for over the last five years. Would I wait? Would I meet someone else? Wouldn't it be amazing to live the rest of my life with the man that I had held such a burning torch for all these years? My mind was spinning and it was no longer a dream, it was reality.

And reality always scares the hell out of me.

The sun began its long journey into dusk, I said goodbye to him and got on my train back to my real life two hours north of Manhattan. My dog, my love, my house, my friends. My life that no longer included him save the memories of our life together in a shoebox in my closet. The cobwebs had begun to emerge since the last time I had dragged out the box. I had someone else in my life that I had tried to love but was scared to death. I was moving on, slowly, unsteadily, but with half hearted conviction that I would be great and that the life I had chosen was the right path. My secret desires were no longer including him....but revealing where I wanted to be, who, when.

My heart aches. Not for him, but for myself. I have spent the last five years rebuilding my life. I have moved on with years of therapy, new men, new experiences. I have never found that love again, but I did find a great solace in knowing that I was living the life I should have. I was sober. I was in control. And I was becoming one hell of a woman.

And as I said goodbye, smiling and laughing and so happy to have had the hours I spent with him, I sat on my train looking at the river. And the tears started pouring from my eyes with relentless pain. How could I wait two years? How could he ask me to sacrifice two years of my life when he couldn't sacrifice one goddamn thing for me in the last ten years? How would I live with myself? How would I live blissfully happy after all the years of heartache I felt? Could I love him that much?

I cried. I cried. I cried some more. And suddenly it hit me like the storm on the river I was passing through. I had loved him so much. I had loved him more than anything, but I didn't love him more than myself. Now, I respect where I have been and where I am going. Now, I know what I deserve and need in my life. And I sat there in utter disbelief that I could be making such an observation. Had it suddenly clicked?

I was willing to take the emotional fall for the sake of this other woman and child. I would walk away silently and without consequence and hope to hell that he would patch up his life now, without me. I realized that I couldn't be the cause of someone else's heartache. I couldn't be personally responsible for this woman and child's loss. And I would not let the pain that was so familiar and detested creep into my heart again. It simply hurt too much and I had come too far in my life to revisit that emotional upheaval again.

Again, no matter how much I had loved him, I finally realized that I loved myself more. And in the technological age that we live, I sent him a text message saying just this and pressed send before I could falter.

And as I went up the river, towards my home, the storm began to pass.

Quote of the week.

"Chase after truth like hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat-tails."
Clarence Darrow (1857 - 1938)

She let go.

"She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the 'right' reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn't ask anyone for advice. She didn't read a book on how to let go... She didn't search the scriptures. She just let go. She let go of all of the memories that held her back. She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward. She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn't promise to let go. She didn't journal about it. She didn't write the projected date in her Day-Timer. She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn't check the weather report or read her daily horoscope. She just let go.

She didn't analyze whether she should let go. She didn't call her friends to discuss the matter. She didn't do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment. She didn't call the prayer line. She didn't utter one word. She just let go.

No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing. Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn't good and it wasn't bad. It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore."
- Ernest Holmes

Quote of the week.

"He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass."
-George Herbert

Four Years.

Here I am, sitting in my office and suddenly it hit me. I mean, HIT ME. Today is my fourth year of being sober.

I frantically begin to try and recall all the moments I have had in the last years milestones; Year One, I threw myself a party. The second, I got the tattoo I had always wanted. The third, I spent mourning my former not so sober life. And in the blink of an eye, I am at year four.

At this milestone in my sobriety, I feel a great amount of appreciation for where I am. My past has become just that, my past. Life these days seem to be moments in which I am learning to appreciate the present in great stride.

I made a decision four years ago and every single day, I find myself reinforcing this decision in varying degrees:

I recall one moment this summer where I was ready to cash in all my sober chips for a reprieve from the emotion that sometimes overwhelm me.

Another moment this year, I sat on the porch of the house I shared with my former husband and cried for the time I had spent in such turmoil. And I mourned the loss of love gone bad.

One day, I cheerfully proclaimed that being sober was the best thing in life only to counter this proclamation a few hours later with a tirade about how horrible it is not to be able to drink.

A few weeks ago, I wept with joy because I had actually stuck to such a profound decision with tenacity. Something I would never had dreamed of years ago.

And that leads me to my four year milestone. The party was had, the token tattoo, the grief. Today, I will let this milestone pass without the hoopla (save for this post). It's another day in my life, one that I am grateful for and one that I am reminded of where I am in my life today.

Sobriety weaves in and out of the emotional fabric that makes up everyday life. Some days, I find snags. Other days, I find patterns I didn't know existed. It's all a mesh of moments, both good and bad, that I find keep my sobriety from become tattered. I appreciate the intricacies and continue to mend those holes that still exist.

So, today, I thank myself for every one of those moments in the past year that bring me to another milestone. I thank all the people I love, I've lost, I've forgiven. For all the moments this year, I am appreciative.

Grow Up.

I have this security blanket.

Not some figurative pyschobabble.
Not some beaming aura over my head.
Not some philosphical translsation.

I own a shredded, thirty one year old blanket that embodies Ragedy Ann and Andy patterns long since past its prime. I mean, I hate the thing. I despise it. It's tattered and torn and sits in my closet with pieces of string barely holding it together. There are times I pull it out to wonder why the hell I keep it. I mean, what am I doing with this thing? There is little, if any, resemblance to the gift someone had once given me as a newborn (I can only imagine, anyway).

Fluffy, newly cleaned smell that makes your heart jump as you bury your head in sumptuos pile?

I don't think so.

The batting-so-old-it-hurts-your-cheeck cloth that I secretly attach to myself in the midst of personal drama? UGH. The thing bothers the piss out of me.

And here I am, a thirty-one year old woman living with the past stuffed in my closet. Pathetic.

The blanket is sitting on the top shelf in the form of a 3x3 representation of my past. A memento from a man I barely remember. A piece of fabric that continues to haunt me and my need to keep it close. I keep it tucked away save the most secret moments that I hold on to a tiny shred of past life.

At some point, life has to go on. The blanket has come to represent what I cannot remember. Feelings, emotions, pieces of life that were woven in the material. Times where the blanket may have been wrapped tightly around me by others. No faces. No memories. Just the vaguest recollection of another era.

And now there is a sense of forboding I feel just looking at it. It stares me down every morning as if to say, "Grow up and get on with your life". This piece of innocent tailorship is the epitome of my baggage in the most domestic form: My inability to come to terms with the loss of my father. My penchant for emotional toil and needless suffering. My constant state of recovery from just about everything addictive, drama included.

Tattered lives. Ragged edges. Softness shredded by such self propeled emotional wear and tear. It makes me angry. I loathe the sight of it. It's the bad relationship I have been looking to end. Over. Kaputz. Ciao. This part of my life that I have been SO ready to let go.

And the time has come to let go of keeping the skeletons warm. Life goes on. When we gain our own integrity, the security comes from life now, not some tattered shred of the past.

Grow-up time. Let go time. Burn Baby Burn time. Screw airing, the time has come to throw out the dirty laundry.