Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Epiphanies While Driving....

Yes, I can write while driving...on real paper...not the same as texting while driving.
Why would someone write while driving?  Well, I used to do it frequently when I was heavily into writing songs.  It seems that driving time is great for creative thinking.  Figuring out what you wrote while driving is another skill...much more difficult, I'm afraid.
But my little road trip to visit friends was full of epiphanies...some small and some not so small...all highly insightful for me.  I have always gotten a lot of peace from visiting my friends.  They live in a tiny house on top of a mountain and they enjoy following their ever-evolving interests.  There is evidence of this all around, from stained glass to gardening to shooting to music.  My friends have been very loving and supportive to me since my suicide....and I have always known that I am always welcome there for as long as I need or want to be there.
My first and most important epiphany this past weekend was that I used to go there knowing that I would be in a much happier state when I left to go back home than when I arrived.  This happiness wasn't 'coming upon me' and I realized that it was the first time in a long time that I arrived there already happy, so I didn't need a 'fill-up' of happiness.  With this feeling I also realized that it is time for me to be there for my friends, that they are struggling with certain things and that it is my turn to be there for them.  I made sure that they knew this while I was there, and reiterated it as I was leaving, too.  A wonderful turnaround for me...
I am coming to understand that I am finally a whole person.  I may not be a finished person, and probably never will, but I am whole.  This is a completely new condition for me.  I have never been a whole grown-up-for-me person EVER!  It is a little scary but so very exciting that I am not scared.  I embrace being grown or getting closer to it, at least.  And I damned sure embrace happiness.  REAL HAPPINESS!!!  The interesting thing...yet another light bulb moment....is that no one can take my real happiness away from me....it is mine!!  They may be able to mess with my day or I may get a flat tire or a headache, but my happiness, this deep-down from-my-soul light, it is mine to keep, to shine, to share....but not something that can be taken from me.
Even as I sit here typing this I feel the power that happiness has given me.  It is quiet, peaceful power.  It took living and dying and being broken and broke and stepping away from my old life to make my new life for me to feel this way.  It is the best gift....and I know that I can go on from here and carry my happiness along with me.  I can tell you that it outshines doubts and worries and lets me know that the universe really does have important things in store for me....I am getting prepared and this happy wholeness is a huge part of that preparation.  I would never have believed it if it hadn't happened....like many strange eventful things...while driving....
may love and peace continue to embrace you, too....

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

A Life...Worth Living...YEAH!

I tried to write about therapy, or lack thereof, yesterday, but I never could get my words to make enough sense or something, so I didn't post anything.  But that's okay, because it took that and then going to my group therapy, DBT group, to be exact, to help me realize what I was trying to get across to you.
The motto of DBT (dialectical behavior training, or something close to that) is that it will 'give you the tools so that you can build a life worth living.'  While I was there yesterday I realized that I finally do have those tools, that my life is worth living, that I have come very, very far along this path.  I think I may be ready to graduate from my group.  I am so very peaceful about this, it is awesome.  I can remember the first few months, after my suicide and at the beginning of my group therapy experience, when I would be so freaked out by something that happened at home or some feeling that I had or remembered, that I would be speeding down the curvy road, crying and praying and knowing that if I could just make it to therapy and to group therapy, that I would be okay, that my crisis would be averted.  It was a place I could go and count on unconditional understanding.  I would feel enveloped in safety, like I was not alone, and that I was among others like myself, who had been to the darkest places within themselves and found their way back out, too.  
Here I am, two years later.  I want to know how the story, all the stories, will end.  I want to go places I've never been and see things I've never seen and touch other people's lives and have my life touched by other people, people I haven't met yet.  I realize that I have just begun my journey...that all of the things that have come before, good and bad, have been to prepare me for what lies ahead.  This is my do-over, my wonderful chance at life that I had to die for.  I find it all so exciting and I am as wide-eyed as a two year old about it all.  
I would not be here, though, were it not for therapy.  The careful taking apart and reassembling of my innards, this I could not have done alone.  I am so very grateful to the people that helped me become me, become better and whole and genuinely happy and strong...it took a village.  I know that I will continue becoming and growing and that I will take with me each and every lesson, filed away carefully so that I may access them easily when needed.
I guess this is another post about the virtues of therapy.  I meet people that go to therapy but don't get the benefit due to their lack of honesty, trust, or humility.  It takes alot of guts to allow others to view and inspect your open wounds, your scars, your secrets, and those niggling things that you realize have been buried for a lifetime or two, and that will wreak havoc upon unearthing.  I told someone recently that if they were going to get anything out of their expensive therapy, they needed to realize that they would have to be willing to laugh, cry, get angry, tell the truth, hear the truth...yeah, all that!  Otherwise they were just going through the motions and would never really learn anything.
I hope that I can reach someone out there.....and that they will find themselves on the right path, the one that points to 'building a life worth living.'
Now, bask in the light of your peace....it is good.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Living on a Two-Way Street

I want to share with you...my unbelievable luck and joy at finding myself in such a wonderful and reciprocal friendship.  As I wrote in a post last month, I left my husband and my old new life without a clue as to where I might land.  Through true serendipity I found myself living in a dear but-we'd-kinda-lost-touch-over-the-years friend's lower-level apartment.  I have a great place, in a great neighborhood, and I feel safe and loved and free to grow into myself.  It is as near perfect as I could have ever hoped for.
But, of course, I now understand that I am not just here for me; I am here for my friend.  She has a full plate and has been juggling alone for quite some time.  She is finally feeling okay financially, but she is bled dry emotionally on a regular basis by her family situations.  And that is what I am here to help her with...her emotional independence...being here to support her as she looks through her past and deals with her present...and I can do this....I know how to do this really well!!!  So I am happy to have this to offer her, aside from our basic friendship, sista-hood....help shedding the dysfunction imposed and implied by others...letting it end with her.  Letting go of some of the responsibility that she has shouldered willingly but at a high cost to herself, when it isn't all hers to bear and therefore the load needs to be redistributed...easier said than done....will be hard for her to give up....I know how to do this, too!
I am so glad to be here, to share what I can, and listen when I should, and offer help as much as it is wanted.
I am so happy to have something of value to add to our friendship.  It feels good to be able to share the lessons I've been faced with and to have a true friend beside me as we each face whatever lessons are in the offing. Grown-up friends....it is cool...it gives me hope...
Peace to you...peace and plenty...plenty of whatever you need...to smile, to breathe, to take that step....

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Cry in the Sun...Dance in the Rain....

I always have such a hard time starting off my posts.  There is always so much to say, so many events that have shaped my time and my choices.  I think I will TRY to post something every day this week, in order to cover all of the things I want to share....maybe more than a week...as I start to make a list, it seems I have alot to tell you, alot to say...which of course, goes along with the other side...alot to learn.
For now, I want to share with you something that I bought for myself yesterday...a little plaque with a little bird on it, and the quote, "anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain."  I honestly did not have an extra $15.00 for something I could go home and recreate with ease.  But I knew that it was something I was supposed to buy, to give myself, to open up this new can of worms that I must have the strength to deal with now, or it wouldn't have been put in my line of vision...gotta love the universe and its way of bringing you around to things that need attention.
Anyway....I saw this little plaque and had an immediate response...I wrote a song about dancing in the rain...one that I never performed because my husband and I just couldn't seem to agree on it musically and he thought it was too hard and dark and I just loved it....I wrote it quite a while ago...one of the first that I'd written, but it never got out of the practice room.  I vow to you, when I am ready to pick up my guitar again, it will be heard.
Here is my song, in its entirety, poem-style....its titled 'Before':
     You think you can make me
     Stand down, and give up my heart
     Your think you can break me,
     But I won't let you tear me apart
     You think that you know me,
     Like you could know all I hold dear
     You think you could show me,
     You act like I've never been here before....before....
          Before you, time went by, but the days weren't so long,
          And the nights weren't as dark; no one said I was wrong.
          Before you, I could laugh for no reason at all;
          I could dance in the rain, now, I just watch it fall.
     You think you control me,
     And that I should just do what you say
     You think you can hold me,
     But I'm gone, hell, I'm lost anyway.
     You think that you love me;
     To you love means you sleep in my bed.
     You think you're above me;
     Well I won't let you inside my head...no more....like before....
          Before you, time went by, but the days weren't so long,
          And the nights weren't as dark; no one said I was wrong.
          Before you, I could laugh for no reason at all;
          I could dance in the rain, now, I just watch it fall.....now, I just watch it fall.....watch it fall...

So, this song was written probably three or more years before I my suicide.
I can read it now and understand what I was saying, where the truth was held, how these words were a moment of clarity in my not quite real world.  Damn...
Amazing what a little plaque could bring back to me...give back to me....$15.00 well spent...
May peace surround you...fill you...shine through you....thank you...