What happens when you are at war with your feelings, emotions and inner self? Someone has to win and lately I feel like I am not in the driver’s seat when it comes to my feelings. As a survivor of a huge loss, I know there will be periods of up and down and even some all around days, but this time I am growing angry because I have found myself in one of those moments.
I know I can’t speed my healing along, however there are times when I really don’t want to be feeling the way I am, this week has been one of those times. Tomorrow marks an anniversary of a big step that my ex took in his new relationship and it is eating away at me from the inside out. I have blogged about this topic before in a post I did two years ago on the actual day. ( Sometimes Broken Can Be Beautiful) I talked about how I had survived a day that I thought was going to be extremely painful but circumstances of MY day led me in a different direction. So why now? Why this week a couple of years later am I feeling like it just happened?
I’ve been trying to analyze the circumstance to see why it is so upsetting to me, other than the obvious of course. I haven’t been much help to myself in thinking about it so I’m trying to rationalize it but I’m not having luck there either. If I look at the senses that contribute to memory I come up empty. I do not have a visual memory nor did I actually hear what was going on in the moment; it’s not like I could touch or smell anything from that day either. I’m still left with the big WHY?
How is this memory, that is not mine in the first place, able to be so haunting? I have tried and tried to change my focus this week and it all comes back to that impending date. If it was possible to erase a day from the calendar, out of all the painful days I have had I have to admit I would erase that anniversary.
Here is my logical explanation, however logical it may or may not be. I spent 20 years married to my childhood sweetheart, my only true love, and on that one day, in possibly a brief hour, my heart was broken. Yes it was damaged during the divorce and everything that led up to it and even in the days following, but this one event was the icing on the cake so to speak.
So now I am at this point where I can see why I am reacting this way, how do I stop it? I’m sure someday this month and date will roll in and not be such a big storm for me, but in the meantime how do I embrace it so that it does not tear me up inside? As I write this tonight, I am sitting in my lovely pink office, (yes pink with glitter), candles are lit and I’m reminding myself to relax. I look up and focus on the oil painted butterfly that hangs above my desk and I am reminded of why I love the butterfly. STRENGTH, COURAGE, TRANSFORMATION and RE-BIRTH.
All of those qualities that I cling to with the butterfly are what I will have to use to get myself through. I will need the strength to not let myself get so upset; the courage to stand up against my feelings and tell myself that I will be OK; transformation will happen with each year I am faced with this pending date; and re-birth will happen on that day that I no longer remember what it meant.
As far as the war goes, I’ve won because I’ve acknowledged that I still need to heal from this. My inner-self is waving a white flag because it knows that as long as I am honest with myself, and continue the work on my healing, those feelings do not stand a chance.
Have you fought with your inner emotions? Please comment
Kimberly
Courageous Butterfly
3/19/14
Free To Be Me, Francesca Battistelli
It’s official! The butterflies are hung, I am home. Change is good, when your prepared. Life is amazing, unpredictable, chaotic, stressful, and full of surprises and it’s one of the reason’s I haven’t written in a while! I never thought that something I was dreading, and nervous about could actually be a positive thing in my life. As I write this tonight, I am sitting in a place where I never imagined I’d be, let alone be ok with it. It’s funny how life works. I have owned a home since 2002 and never set foot inside until two years ago, and just recently I moved in to make it MY home.
I’ve noticed that while we see the beautiful butterfly, the product of all the hard work, we rarely see the caterpillar. I visited a butterfly garden this summer and the focus was on the butterflies flying around the exhibit, but I was entranced with the caterpillars in their cocoons. The time spent in the chrysalis is the toughest part of the transformation. I would guess that there would be confusion, pain, worry and fear. Sounding familiar? They are too me. Those are exactly the feelings I dealt with while surviving my divorce, or as I like to think of it, the beginning of my time spent in the chrysalis.
Out of the Chrysalis 