Moving On…

By the time I get to this post, I’m kind of done with this story. I’m 2 weeks into my Facebook break…
no, not quite two.
WILL THIS MONTH EVER END????? 

For reals, are we there yet?
This was a stupid idea.
BLEH.

12 days into it, and that little trainwreck of a kickoff was so last week. Writing the whole things out is beginning to feel like –

But I shall do it. I shall finish this dang story already so we can move on with other stories.

So.
How did that initial SPLAT work out?

I called my favorite energy healer. She’s also an herbalist (like, the certified, professionally trained kind) and just a very talented intuitive healer. Love it. She’s my other favorite go-to for getting out of these kinds of messes.

I said, “I hate to bug you, but… I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t like feeling crappy.”

She said, “Happy to help! Let’s see what we can do.”

At this point now I almost can’t remember what she even had me work on. Let’s see…

Short story:
We cleared things out and I felt 100% better at the end of our 45 minutes on the phone. Night/day difference. Back to myself again. Whew.

Long story:
If I recall correctly, there were 2 things in the way of getting to the real issue underlying that flashback. We spent the bulk of our time talking through those, with her asking questions and kind of guiding me to see into things I’ve been happily ignoring.

That’s often what PTSD-reactions are about, actually. There are painful experiences you don’t want to deal with, so you ignore them. You don’t want to look at them. Without even consciously doing it, you shut them out… until your mind says, “ENOUGH. This is here. Deal with it!”

It’s kind of nice, actually, dealing with things that are more recent. When I first broke down 5 years ago, and life came to a crashing halt and my world turned inside out and things got mega-hard, I was too bamboozled by it all to deal with how I felt about everything that was going on. Most of the time, I was in too much pain to even recognize (let alone process) what was going on during that massive shift.

Putting teeny-tiny munchkins into half-day preschool. Bringing my 16yo niece out to live with us so she could help with our baby during the day, so Mr Smith could teach his classes in the morning. Eventually, having horrible memories resurface and run me over like a freaking freight train (which at least explained why things had been so gosh-darn awful emotionally for me).

And then 2 years of really really hard. That 3rd year wasn’t super glorious either, but it was better.

All of that rather drastically changed how I understand myself and the world around me… in a good way.

But there was a grief that never got acknowledged. A deep sense of loss — of losing who I thought I was. I can’t ever go back to that ignorance-is-bliss state I lived in before. I can’t ever go back to “la-la-land” where I can’t acknowledge that anything really bad ever happens to me.

Nope.

Life is real and hard and sometimes “bad” things happen to “good” people, and honestly, it’s all just a lot better if you drop the bad/good labels anyway. Some things create joy, some things create pain, and it’s all part of life.

It’s especially sad, though, when children suffer. Something inside us knows it’s really, really bad to hurt the little ones. Why is that?

Because they’re still growing. They can’t process things like grownups can. The suffering gets woven into who they think they are and what they believe the world is like. It can stick with them and have an impact on their life so significant, we are only just beginning to understand it.

That sense of loss — loss of myself as I was before The Crash… it was really hard to shake it. It didn’t want to clear until I’d examined it thoroughly. For lack of a better analogy, it seemed to have a string tied to me that I just could cut.

Eventually, I had to detach a little from the grief and find a space of gratitude… and then (when I wasn’t looking for it) I found that string. Ha!

There are so many marvelous things that happened because of that breakdown… I was sad that it couldn’t have happened sooner. I needed to be here, with these absolutely incredible, loving, nonjudgemental neighbors & friends. I needed foot zoning. I needed energy work and so many other wonderful tools that helped me learn more than I could have with just conventional stuff.

It would have been sad if The Crash had happened sooner and prevented any of our 6 kids from coming just like they did. The way they all pal around like best friends pretty much warms my heart every single day. They also drive each other bonkers every single day, but they’ll outgrow that. I hope.

Anyway. It all happened exactly how it was supposed to, in God’s perfect timetable.

But I was still sad about it and I was so busy at the time, processing all the old stuff & trying to just get by day to day, I couldn’t even think about that part.

So!

Cleared that, dealt with it, then my awesome energy worker healer herbalist friend pointed out the REAL thing that needed to change so that life could be better (because that was all just preliminary)…

And then, in a matter of maybe 10 minutes, things went from grey and sad to light and happy.

That “real thing” had been a long time in coming (like, 5 years) and it was wonderful to get it worked out. She basically got in my face a little bit and let me know that Mr Smith and I needed to be friends. Best friends. To her, his energy looked all clean and happy and patiently longing to just be connected to me… and mine was like, “ARGH, I HATE YOU.”
Sort of. Kind of. Basically. More or less.

It was so awesome to get called out on that! Oh man. Loved it. Keep in mind, this person I was working with over the phone isn’t here local. She hasn’t seen me and my dear Mr Smith interacting. She hasn’t seen his cheerful/happy self, being all wonderful, and my crabby/witchy self, throwing (figurative) daggers at him for no reason. Truly. That’s how it was.

Not even an hour before this healing session, Mr Smith & I had been having a conversation and he literally told me, in exasperation, “I guess I just won’t talk to you any more, then.”

I said, “What? Why? What did I say???”

“It’s not what you said. It’s how you said it. Every word is just dripping with malice, Dear, and I have no idea what it’s about.”

Neither did I. Which was annoying, to say the least. Here’s this guy that I love, and I’m just…. ARRRRRGH underneath the surface in pretty much all my interactions with him.

Sound familiar? I’m being raw and real here because I *know* I’m not the only one who’s got that dynamic going on.

We cleared all the negative, ugly feelings I’d been harboring, and she gave me the pep talk that went along the lines of,

“Have fun with your husband! Play games, go on walks, tell jokes, talk…Every day! You guys had a great time together when you were dating, or you wouldn’t have gotten married. Nurture that friendship. Then when you have hard stuff to process emotionally, you’ll have that foundation to build on. You won’t feel trapped, because he’s your best friend! That’s why the Facebook break triggered something. You’ve been connecting with that instead of with him.”

Gotta love it when folks don’t pull any punches. Whooey. Good stuff!

It was a smidge-bit tiring, actually, but other than that, it was pretty dang great.

I got off the phone, came downstairs, greeted my sweetheart with a smile — a genuine, happy-to-see-you, I’m-sorry-I-was-a-jerk smile — and he was like, “Wow! Hi! Does this mean we can be friends again?”
Yes. Yes, it does.
He continued, “So…. I owe her a thank you note?”
Yes. Yes, you probably do.

So THAT was the wonderful conclusion to my crappy educational first 3 days off Facebook.

I got my bootie kicked, but I kind of needed it.

Thank you, healingyourselfcompletely.com for being fabulous.

And thank you, Mr Smith, for being so incredibly devoted as a husband. It’s been a long, bumpy road, and you’ve been superhumanly patient. I’m sorry I was hiding in Facebook. I’m sorry I forgot that you really are my bestest friend. Thank you for sticking it out and putting up with my being… um… whateverthatwas.