The swift coming of my 30th class reunion coupled w
One person in particular seized my mind as ghosts from the past will sometimes do. This person, CWDP, had come into my life from a far off place - dropped like a human meteorite, literally, in my back yard.
I had been dating a young man who had some 'yet to be uncovered issues' and I accompanied him to a friends house one evening. I walked into a house (which at the time, unbeknownst to me, was a church related half-way house). It honestly didn't matter that I had no clue as to what that was at the time because it was love at first sight.
There stood a quite tall, quite broad male in his late 20's with slightly shaggy, slightly sun-kissed blond hair. The hair framed a pleasant and open Germanic face with Hazel Blue eyes and a slight gap in the front teeth. We locked eyes. I understand now it was for very different motivations.
At the time I was maturing at so many different rates as well as regressing in others. I would've done anything to escape my childhood home, my mothers mental illness, my fathers rage, and the constant flood of financial insecurity which silently seeped and soaked like a plague over everything. Almost overnight, the other guy was history and CWDP and I were inseparable.
I'm in my mid to late 40's now and my mind seems to perform subtle seemingly unplanned excavations of my memory on both mental and cellular levels. I say seemingly because I know there are greater forces I've accepted...a sort of Meta Self...that knows exactly what it is doing. I've learned to trust this process.
Back to the present...
I decided to look CWDP up on social media. Nothing. I looked him up in my surrounding state. Nothing. Then I recalled he had always had an affinity for the beach, specifically the state of Florida. I had run there after my high school graduation with him, to escape, to 'start a new life' and to prove that I could do better than what I had been raised with. Young impetuous fool.
I decided one more search, then I would search no more. Come on Sunshine state...
I typed in his name and 5 seconds later arrest records appeared throughout the mid to lower section of Florida.
One offered a picture.
I clicked on it and waited, it was like looking through cloudy water as it refreshed a few times until it became clear.
A Mugshot of a 54 year old CWDP.
People stay frozen in our minds at the age we remember them, as if the brain has a snapshot that is always current and fresh. I wasn't looking at that shaggy open Germanic face of 26, I was looking at what he had become, what he was under that surface all along. It was difficult and frightening. I talk a good talk but when it comes to the law, I respect and obey. Without it we would deteriorate into chaos. And that is what I saw. Chaos. Eyes that had become devoid of anything remotely like the 20 something I left years ago when my father (within and hour of my distress call) procured a ticket to bring me home from the sunshine state.
And suddenly, with the maturity of looking at a road behind oneself and looking at roads that may not have been traveled, I suddenly understood that I was one lucky girl that grew into one lucky woman who, upon seeing that picture, transformed into a deeper state of gratitude than I thought possible.
My process through things is to write, to lay down ink, to get it out on paper where I can save or burn it, to not let whatever it is fester in me like an infection; stealing my energy and life force.
I ran south with this guy. I left my family behind. Forgiving myself for what I had put them through took much time. Forgiving them for what I was running from took longer. If they would've known better, they would've done better - same for me.
I had watched this young man and pretended not to see the small hints...petty crimes, theft, small drug things, larger theft, entitlement, narcissism, lack of remorse. I felt if I just loved enough I could absorb all of that and it would all be ok...such awful learned behaviors. If you knew better, you would've done better. Let it go. You raised your children and gave them tools you didn't have, tools you had to learn. They have them now , it's ok to let it go and lay it down.
The biggest surprise is what I'm going to share now...
I have learned to love my ex-husband, and this situation deepened that love.
My ex-husband was quite a bit older when I met him. He had gotten most of his dumb shit out when I met him. Most of it. Those patterns can be so deeply ingrained within us that if we don't recognize that they are there, if we don't balance and learn from them, if we do not honor that they are as much a part of us as everything else we are, they can AND WILL overtake us.
I felt grateful for him. Grateful for my ex-husband. Even though he almost broke me, and hollowed me out, he made me so very strong. He also gave me the children I have, which made me so very tender. It is because of this love and strength that I was forced to dive deeper within myself, and to give my children what both he and CWDP never had; the unconditional love of a mother - a real mother that was all in, all the time. 100% straight from some dormant DNA in my soul that expressed itself upon my near demise. I love a stronger unbridled love today because of my ex-husband.
Because of him I became an almost mythical warrior mother being, to be there, to watch, to willingly be over vigilant to the point of exhaustion, to pour so much love, over and over again out of a seemingly empty cup. I was able to look at my children and turn to look at the history of my past and somehow I knew that was both God and the perfect divine alignment of everything. The unseen had been watching out for us - watching our for me, so I could stand when I wanted to fall, so I would protect them when I was too weary to lift my soul sword. I work on self acceptance every day, but never once do I doubt that I am now strong.
I work on happiness, undoing grooves in the record of my brain to create new paths. I crave to 'Learn Better so I may do Better' it's there for all of us if we want it.
I've earned and gained the respect of friends and family who view me with eyes I will never see myself through.
I truly believe self evolution is a Great Magical Realization and Shift where you hover above your own being and see all sides, all angles, both gray places and thin spaces. You accept the wrong and the right, the clean and the dirty, the muddy and the clear; for you would not know one true side of anything without the other. It is within this mosaic of everything I am learning to accept the gift that is ME.
I've earned others' respect but more importantly; I've earned my own. This has been the hardest to imagine, accept and do. It was only when I was tired, completely spent yet grateful and tender with myself that both respect and forgiveness washed over me...took me in it's arms and said 'It's ok, YOU are ok.' It's a wonderful magical shift I wish for everyone, for what is this life if we know not the unexcavated parts of ourselves?
'Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure' - Rumi
Namaste
