pain – Page 6 – Out of the Chrysalis

A Fish Out Of Water

Published on July 21, 2013 by Kimberly Novak2 Comments

Stop the presses!!! Hold the phone!!! Pause Please!!!

3309237-fish-and-fauna-under-water Did you know that a fish has no idea it is in water? That’s where it spends every moment of its life and it has no idea that it is moving in water. It cannot see it, smell it, taste it, all it knows is that is the environment in which it lives and if it is taken from that, the breathing stops. A setting that is sounding all too familiar for me.

I had a light bulb go off right above my head just a few moments ago and it was so bright I sat right down at my laptop and starting clicking away. This may sound similar to some of you who have been dealing with loss and emotional pain. I have been spending day after day for the past two years trying to overcome and cope with the loss I suffered. I’ve been going about my day living in my new environment just like a little fish. Imagine for a moment a gold-fish very accustomed to her cute little bowl and one day her world changes. She is forced to move to unfamiliar territory with new fish and plastic plants. She is frightened but because she is still in water, she is still breathing. Being a shy fish she keeps to herself as if she were still in her little bowl. She goes about her days thinking she is ok because she is breathing, no one around her knows that inside her mind she is drowning in her own thoughts. She makes the most of it but never seems to be able to get anywhere, her mind has taken over. Day’s begin to blur into nights and before long she has lost herself. She has adapted to her surroundings, her new life, but is she still living? As long as she has her water she is, but remember….she doesn’t know she is in water!

I am going to become very brave here and admit that I may have been drowning. I have been hiding within myself thinking it was what I was supposed to do. I’m grieving, I’m healing but I am NOT living! Now I didn’t lock myself up in my home and board up the window’s but I may as well have. I was still breathing, so I just figured I was living. On the surface it looked that way, I go to work flash a few smiles, play with the puppy and giggle a little, watch some tv, do a little reading. What has changed? I’m still going about my day to day activities. But what would happen if someone took away my air? Just like the fish who doesn’t know she is in water, as we are grieving and healing, we can’t see if we are not living. live

I went out this afternoon and spent some time with a group of fabulous women and I was a little upset with myself at first because I was quiet, reserved, arguing with my mind. “They all know your divorced”, “They can tell your single”, “Just don’t talk maybe no one will notice you are the only one in the room not wearing a ring”. It took a good 30 minutes of listening to this crap from inside my head before I loosened up and finally freed mysef from my own mind! I slammed the door shut, and didn’t listen to another word it had to say. Instead I found myself in the moment. Laughing at jokes, enjoying conversation, food, and even touch. I let every sense live, breathe and take in what I had been missing out on for so long; for the first time in a long time I chose life over my thoughts.

Scary you ask? Oh ya, but what was horrifying was knowing that I have been keeping myself locked up for so long when I didn’t have to. The afternoon went very pleasantly, I left with a smile on my face and it was one that I haven’t seen in a very long time. It motivated me and I have been a very different lady today. I think I can finally look in the mirror at myself and say “you’re ok”.

I had shut myself off. It’s as if on divorce day someone hit the off switch and I lost it along the way. It took a simple little Sunday afternoon ladies lunch to find it and turn it on. I want the light in me to never go out again, I like it bright and the brighter the better!

Ladies/Gent’s, let your lights continue to shine, do not turn yourself off and if you already have, seek out friends and loved ones to remind you of the light that is within you so that you too can turn it on again.

Do you have a similar story? Please share.

Kimberly

Courageous Butterfly

7/21/13

Between You and Me

Published on January 27, 2013 by Kimberly Novak2 Comments

women_support-1 I have come to a realization that the healing process is more complex than I ever thought it was. Every speed bump that I encounter along my transformation is just a reminder how fragile we can be during this process. Between you and me, sometimes life just seems like chapters of goodbyes.

An important part of my transformation process is an annulment. My divorce has been final for two years but there is a part of me that needs to reconcile that part of my life with God. I’ve known that the process can be very lengthy and somewhat challenging. For me, completing the initial paper work was not as hard as I thought it was going to be, partly because I have already been writing my story through this blog. Even though several months have passed since I mailed in the petition , I hadn’t forgotten about it, however it wasn’t constantly on my mind either.

This past week I received a letter stating the process had officially begun and I would be contacted if further information was needed. When I saw the envelope I knew what was inside and at first I felt happiness. I was eager to open it up and see what it said knowing that this would soon end another chapter of the pain I had gone through. The emotion that I was waiting for never came, instead I was immediately thrown into tears. Just like I discussed in my last two posts, I was reminded of an emotion that left a very big wound. Opening that envelope and seeing his name on the paper with mine left my mind in a tail spin. emotional-divorce-300x265

I felt anger, sadness, heart-break, and loss. Then I was upset with myself because again I thought I was comfortable enough with my divorce that I could handle being reminded of the marriage in this way. I reached out to a friend who has been through the annulment process and he quickly reminded me that divorce is actually the death of a marriage, and I will never forget. These emotions will come back off and on and when least expected. Between you and me, I’m not sure I”m ready for a lifetime of never forgetting.

Because this is something that is very important to me, I will face these emotions head on and with as much strength as I can muster up. I know that it is another step in the healing process. I am still mourning my marriage as I would any other death, I just didn’t realize it until now. I think the hardest part for me will be having the courage to face the tears. Ya, that’s crazy coming from courageous butterfly I know. In the beginning it was easy for me to cry, not sure if that makes any sense, crying is crying. But it is different now because I’ve gone through the death. It is a closed case, so the tears now are pure emotions, not related to my present life or my future, they are strictly tears of the past. Between you and me, tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it. –Albert Smith.

When mourning the death of a loved one you are constantly saying goodbye and this is no different. Each time you view a photograph or have a memory you are reminded of the life you spent with that person, and will be forced to say goodbye over and over again. I thought I had said my goodbyes in the courtroom two years ago, I had no idea that it would be a lifetime of goodbyes. Though this is a major goodbye, it won’t be the last. There will be many situations in life that force us to say goodbye. Whether it be a job, a friend, a lover, a pet, or family member. Between you and me, Goodbye’s are not easy.

So what does all of this mean at this point in my journey? As far as I can tell it means that I have to be prepared for emotions that I thought I had already processed. I will encounter situations that may bring up some old emotional memories and remind me of my scars. I have to continue to seek advice from other’s who have been on this journey before me, listen to their kind words and learn from their experiences. Between you and me, this is why I’m sharing with you now.

I hope that the thoughts, feelings and experiences on my survival will encourage other’s going through a similar circumstance to learn to grow from each emotion, memory, feeling and tear. I am still learning and have a lot more ahead of me. Within my chrysalis I am growing stronger and when it is time I will emerge the butterfly I am meant to be. Between you and me, I will embrace it.

Do you have a similar story, can you offer any advice on how to embrace the goodbye? Respond in the comments.

Kimberly

Courageous Butterfly

1/27/13

Related blogs/links

Here Comes Goodbye, Rascal Flatts

Saying Goodbye, Wonder Blogs

With Every Goodbye You Learn, Luna Starla’s Dreamy Stories

Marriage-Divorce-Annulment by Catholic Answers Live

Emotional Memory

Published on January 11, 2013 by Kimberly Novak7 Comments

Brain-conceptual-image-puzzle Anyone who has spent time on a fitness program knows that the muscles of our body are equipped with muscle memory. Meaning that when we work out our muscles grow accustomed to different types of movement, thus turning it into an unconscious learning process for the body. What would happen if we apply that to our emotions?

In my last post I talked about PTSD after divorce and this topic goes right along with it. Recently I have suffered from effects of both PTSD and what I believe is emotional memory. It has taken me by complete surprise. I was even reluctant to publish the post thinking that it wasn’t really relevant to those suffering a divorce, but I was quickly put to ease when I started researching it. I’m glad I decided to talk about it because it is a real problem and there are many of us suffering from it. With support and the ability to share our stories, we can all learn how to get past this current emotional state.

At this point on my journey I was convinced that I was past all of that. I had dealt with what I thought were all of my emotions during my divorce and for the first year afterwards. Like I said in the previous post, I had forgiven and moved on. I am finding out now that the journey of healing is a longer road than I thought. I have reached a pretty high mountain and it was no where on my radar screen, it just appeared.

Take a second and pretend you are a little kid again and have just entered an amusement park….I bet right now you are feeling excited and happy and it feels just the same as it did all those years ago. That is emotional memory. We don’t think about it when it is something that makes us happy, we just accept the feeling because it is a good one. It affects us in a totally different way when it is an emotion that caused us pain or sadness.

I was recently in a brief relationship with someone and just before it ended I could sense that something was a little off. My intuition, which I finally am in tune with, was telling me that something was different. When we had the conversation and ended things I felt exactly the same as I did when I received the email telling me my marriage was over. I was overcome with emotions that I should not have been feeling because they were left over from the divorce. It made no sense to me because you could not even compare the pain of my divorce to this current event. However, since both situations ended in a loss, that was the trigger. Even though they had very different outcomes the same emotional memory response was felt. When this happened I started out being very angry with myself. I was upset because I was spending more time with these emotions that I had already dealt with two years ago. I was feeling very frustrated with the fact that maybe I’m crying now because I was too strong when I should have been weak, and really taken the time to face those feelings. I quickly realized that is not the case. No matter how much time I took dealing with those emotions as they were happening, my brain was busy storing them up. It took this event to bring them back to the front of my memory, thus filling me with the exact emotional response. emotional memory

I will admit that all of this has been pretty scary. I’m now faced with the fact that anything in life may produce these memory responses, and that they can happen at any time. The hardest part will be allowing myself to live life and experience situations where some of these feelings may resurface. I was under the impression that only the divorce itself could produce those emotions, and that since the divorce was over, I should never feel like that again….I was wrong.

I know now that my journey of healing is still very much in progress and I am thankful for the recent relationship. Not only because it brought joy and happiness back into my life, but also because it took losing it to know that I still have a lot of work to do! It is a blessing to me that I had enough courage to put myself back out there. I am also grateful that it has happened now rather than ten years down the road. Because right now I am still in battle mode and I will use the strength that I gained from having survived the divorce to learn how to handle this new stage of the healing and transformation process.. When it comes up again, which it will, I will be ready and know how to respond. I’m slowly getting past the anger of it all and realizing that only I can choose how I handle this. I am the only one living it, therefore I am the only one who can move me past it. In a recent conversation with someone who means the world to me, I was reminded of an old song that speaks volumes for how I am currently feeling. In the voice styling of Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes: the road is long and there are mountains in our way, but we could climb a step every day….love lift us up where we belong! I like to replace the word love with they’ll, because as I climb each step of any painful mountain, they’ll bring me closer to being fully healed.

I’ve begun keeping a dream journal to help me see what other subconscious emotions may be brewing inside this little brain of mine. Talking it out with close friends and my counselor has also been beneficial. I think it’s a little early for me to offer any concrete advice but I would like to suggest that if you are going through this, do not try to suppress it. Let it out! It will be very hard to feel all of the painful emotions again but it is the only way to heal through it. If we keep suppressing them our emotional memory responses will never learn how to properly process them so that when they are brought out they are less painful each time.

I had several comments on the post relating to PTSD and I hope that there are other’s who will share their stories relating to that topic as well as this one. Your comments and advice are welcome below!

Kimberly

Courageous Butterfly

1/11/13

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