Easier said than done...

“Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be. Love, the Universe” 

                                                                         ~someone way smarter than me (obviously)

Life can be stupidly hard. 

It really sucks dirty monkey balls sometimes.

It tears out your heart and your soul, 

Whips them them around 

tosses everything onto a canvas

like some splatter painting

or spin-art

and displays it's handiwork for all the world to see, 

Then, if you're lucky, you get to stuff whatever is left over back into yourself

and pray you can carry on without the missing bits.

And the world?

It expects you to just fucking smile and carry on. 

The people around you expect it because that is what people are supposed to do, right?  

Just get over it and move on, right?

Bullshit!  

When all the shitstorm went down, I was lucky enough to have people that allowed me to just be, and feel, whatever I was at the time. 

Mostly, anyhow.

But me, myself?

I told myself I was stronger than that life-fucking, soul-crushing heartbreak. 

So long as I  was going along, I was staying strong.  

That so long as I kept plugging away, it wasn't going to affect me.  

So when the pain threatened to overwhelm me, I'd get pissed at myself--to a point where I was almost hating myself. 

Yeah--that's precisely what I needed--a healthy dose of self-loathing for something I didn't even fucking do.

All I wanted (short of a reconciliation--because he was "my person") was for the hurting to just, for the love of God, to just stop. Please, please, please just let it stop.

And then there was the intense, scary anger. What I didn't understand--and was bothered by-- was the intensity of this rage because it had no place to go. 

I was hurting from this anger that was to some degree without compassion, and most definitely without direction. Unless you count turning it inward.

In some ways, I still am.

But, repressed emotion will always surface eventually and it will explode in unexpected ways.

If only I could forget how we were together, just a normal day to day together...

...we were always so content just to be together, to simply be us.  

To be happy.

Together.

If only I could lose this false hope that, as always, in the end, everything would work out okay for us.

As long as I had this hope, any kind of hope (false or otherwise), I had a reason not to face any of it.

It had to stop...I would not be able to function as I needed to until it did.

And I still really wanted to just forget.

To forget how we were before the heartbreak.

To forget how I was feeling right now. 

And to forget how I felt before the shitshow hit.  

To forget meant to not miss the essential "us" so much, and to forget all the love we had would absolve me of this pain.  

To forget the bad thing he did too, because that was the root of ALL my pain.

I also wanted to forget every stupid little thing I wrote, or said, or did that may have caused him to do what he did. 

That made me, somehow in his eyes, just not good enough any more. 

That somehow, this was indeed my fault.

It just kept playing in my head in a never-ending loop from hell.  

I couldn't shut the goddamned thing off and it was making me crazy.

I tried to find solace within my own crazy head while avoiding the people in my life who would see thru my ruse of false bravado...

...who would say all the right things and, in turn,  open the emotional floodgates...

...or see the raw fury that was the real light in my eyes...not the light reflecting off unshed tears.

I didn't know how I would respond so I simply avoided everyone--I didn't want anyone to see that.  

It wasn't me and I didn't want their perception of the happy-go-lucky, spirited Jane they all knew to be tainted by that.

So, I decided the best course of action was to enlist the help of a therapist.  

I needed an objective and safe outlet to get all this off my chest and out of my head. 

To stop the never-ending loop of self-recrimination. 

Where I found the wisdom to do something in the dark place I was in, I'll never know.

What I did know was that I couldn't work my way through this alone and I couldn't subject the people I cared about to all the details of this intensely intimate relationship.  

Even for all we've shared here on the blog, it pales in comparison to how we truly are together in real life.

I gotta say, I was afraid to start therapy.  

I was bawling in the waiting room that first day just filling out the paperwork.

I was, in a word, terrified.

I didn't even know if I'd be able to talk--and for the first few minutes, I really couldn't.  

I just sat there bawling and then joking about how he (the therapist) should really consider buying stock in kleenex now that I was a patient. (those were the first words I was able to utter after a brief introductory hello)

It took me several appointments--and I do mean SEVERAL severals--to open up.  He was, at first appearance and impression, a very buttoned up kind of guy.  Suitcoat and tie...just...so very straight-laced.  

I wasn't sure I would be able to talk to him, this seemingly uptight dude.

I didn't want this stranger to ask questions.  

Especially the hard questions that I didn't have the answers to, or didn't want to answer at all.  

Or the recommendation I knew he would eventually make that I knew I wouldn't follow.

To quit talking to Tripp, to quit seeing him...go no contact, and to do it cold turkey.

It was during this recent recommendation that I explained to my therapist that I was not at the point of accepting that this is where I am at in this process of changing my view of the world.  And if I am not truly ready to accept this change, then any change would feel forced and ultimately unaccepted and doomed to fail.

I do not like to be forced and will dig my heels in doubly hard when I feel like I am being moved to do something I do not want to.

Thankfully, he is without judgement and is patient.  And not nearly as uptight as I first thought him to be.

He is, actually, pretty damn cool (even if he is a suit...)

He often says I make his job easy because I do have an incredible amount of self-awareness and I know myself well enough to know what will and won't work for me.

I know I have yet to fully feel everything around this.  

I know I am bottling up some of the rawest emotion, not letting loose the cannons, so to speak--that I am refusing to surrender to this new reality.  

To surrender means to accept.  I'm just not ready to do that.

And until I am ready to give up the last vestiges of control over these emotions, to just fully let go, I will still have a bone to pick with reality as I see it. 

I am slowly coming to a place of accepting "it is what it is until it ain't no more", but am still at it being what it is...I'm not to the point of "until it ain't no more".

I may never get there...and I have to be willing to accept that as well.

But, until I do--I will cherish the good times because, just as with the bad times, "this too shall pass" 

(Tripp hates when I say that...but it is true, regardless).

Just sayin'...