Each piece of life and writing and journaling is a little bit of clarity. However it wasn't until after my father died almost 18 months ago that the pieces started to click into place. Everything that I had ever been through started to make sense. My whole life was like a jigsaw puzzle that started to come together into a clear picture. Gluing the parts together seemed simple, as if my inner or higher self knew all along what it would all mean, and my conscious mind was just starting to get it.
When my father died, I pushed my grief down way, way below my feet, into the Earth. I buried it so deeply that I would either never find it again or never have to touch it. We were prepared for his death. He was sick for years, his mental illness got the best of him, he had tried to end his life before, he didn't want to live past 65 when his disability ran out, and he wanted to leave money for his daughters. The reasons went on and on, and they all made sense.
What didn't make sense was my inability to grieve. I cried, sure. But I shut down that part of myself that hurt, cared, and wanted to heal. I had to handle the estate and take care of his house. I had to close his accounts, get everything in order, and clean up the mess that he'd been hoarding since his mother died in 2003. How I felt didn't matter. What mattered was getting it done so that I could move on with my life. I had the reasons, and I needed to pick up the pieces. It was simple.
We closed the estate in March, a year after he died. I thought I was ready to grieve, and really feel what I had been denying. There were a few false starts, a few bouts of crying, but my heart was still closed. When you go through the process of healing yourself energetically, it's a bottom up venture- I had started to heal the parts of me that rooted myself to the Earth, created, and felt powerful. My heart was next, and I knew grief is stored in the heart, and if I was honest with myself, I was afraid of opening that box.
In May I started working with a man who pulled all of the walls I had built down. Once the walls were down I was staring at the parts of myself I had ignored for so long. Why had I stopped taking care of myself? Why had I dissociated from my pain? What was I afraid of? Why was I holding onto bad habits? Why was I hell bent on hurting myself? How was I going to get out of this funk and get myself back?
I didn't truly understand at the time why I decided to start working with him. I didn't like him, but I felt like he had the key somehow to getting me back to where I was supposed to be. The more I worked with him the more he pushed me. I hated it, I didn't want to push myself, or have someone else push me to get better. I hit the wall after four sessions together and wanted to quit. I was determined to quit. I didn't want to see what was right in front of me.
Then, like the other clicks, this piece clicked. He said the only way to create healthy habits was to start living them. I wanted to get better. I wanted to face my demons, it was time. After my second Reiki attunement I started to see things more clearly. I saw myself, what I had been hiding, what I had been pushing down into nothingness, and the things I didn't want to tell myself. They had to come up and out in order to be healed.
However, I had started to push back. I could see things in him now that I didn't see before. The healer in me kicked in and I wanted to help him. He said he was a clean slate and I was just projecting and reflecting everything I needed to work on. But it was deeper than that, and he didn't want or need my help.
I started digging and asking him questions, creating stories in my head, some true, some not. Dug deeper, to see how far I could go. When he didn't let me in I demonized him. I said he was the problem, he was the issue, started complaining to my friends, talking about him, creating drama around him that didn't exist, and acting victimized.
I didn't realize what I was doing until a friend pointed it out. She attends AA. As a third generation alcoholic I'm naturally attracted to alcoholics and people who are second generation alcoholics. The alcohol may be gone in a second and third generation person, but the behavior is not. Living with an alcoholic is dramatic... it's up, down, highs, lows, bottomless pits, elation, abuse, and pain. The pattern can repeat itself again and again until it's broken.
She looked at me and pointedly said, "I'm an addict. And so are you. I'm addicted to relationship drama, and so are you. If it's not there, I create it. If it is there, I make it worse. It's like a drug. You're not a victim, you have poor boundaries." My brain went, "WHAT??" It was like a slap in the face, a huge wake up call.
My father had always been passive, he didn't have boundaries, and he was a victim. He wouldn't stand up for himself and complained when people took advantage of him. Was I this person??? How could I possibly be this person when it was the one quality I hated most in my father?? How could I have perpetuated this, when I knew better?
I looked at my life and the completed puzzle pointed to exactly what she had said. I had been creating drama since I was twelve. I made choices at that age that changed my perception of boundaries. I didn't have any, and I didn't see any in other people, or their relationships. I would either attract people with poor boundaries or be rejected by people with good ones. I wasn't a victim at all.
By this time I had started to chase him. I was trying so hard to get in, to figure out how he ticked, and to figure out how to heal him. He was nice, friendly, interested, but to a point. The harder I tried the higher his walls got and the more he pushed back. We discussed my boundary issues. I violated my own rules that I had created for myself. He got colder. I didn't realize at the time that it was the most compassionate thing he could do.
My head was spinning. Creating all these stories, timelines, more and more drama, until my higher self said "Enough! Get quiet, and see what this is really about." I knew that this was bigger than the drama, it was related to my father, my poor boundaries, my blindness to my own issues, and my need to heal. I shut everything off that was distracting me. It got really, really quiet.
What came up first was my fear of inadequacy. The drama was whirling around to distract me from the fact that I was afraid that I would fail at my new calling. I had failed before. I love energy work and if I failed I thought it would destroy me. To a perfectionist mistakes are the end of the world. What if I made a huge mistake? What if I screwed up? What if had another failure? What if I had to do something else with my life?
Then... it came up that I was trying to create pain for myself. Would a divorce hurt more than my father's death? I thought not. Nothing hurt that much. I was creating that pain to distract me from the pain of grief, the permanent loss of someone connected to you by blood, tears, and joy. I was disconnecting from my husband so that I could avoid that pain. I thought I would rather be dead than feel the pain of grief.
Finally, it came up that I thought I wanted to die. I wanted to go with my father. I missed him so much that I was willing give up my life to see him again. This wasn't about the man I was chasing, whether he would let me in, or if I would figure out how to heal him. It was me missing my Dad. Wanting to see him again, hear his voice, hug him, and be close to him.
The crushing pain that I had pushed down so far into the Earth was finally bubbling up and reachable again. It was palpable. And it was back where it was supposed to be, ready to be healed, in my open heart.
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