Finding Purpose

Very recently, I hit rock bottom.

When I say rock bottom, I mean the lowest I've been in my life.

What got me there was a family member coming dangerously close to taking their own life. In response, I came ridiculously close to ending my own.

Let me explain what ridiculously means: For the first time in 35 years, I came to a conclusion as to how I would end my life.

I didn't know when I would do it, but in the moment, I felt it would be soon. I decided I would go ahead and update my will and start getting rid of any excess goods I had to lessen the burden on my survivors. Because I'm me, I suppose, I also came to the conclusion in the moment that I was not in a rational enough frame of mind to take action right then. I decided I would need to sleep on it and give myself a few days before I started the process.

You might think of me, what's happened in my life, what I've said about having a member of my family consider their own life and think, "Well, of course you hit rock bottom. Perfectly understandable." But as having had depression my entire life and having been through many other stressful situations, I myself was startled by finding the bottom. I was so startled that I struggled for a couple of weeks to get my head above water.

Fortunately, I already had a scheduled visit to a counselor because I've been feeling overwhelmed in general lately. Everything has felt immeasurably harder and I've been frustrated as to why. My conversation with my counselor involved a requirement to sign a contract that I wouldn't hurt myself.

Initially, I was angry:

"You can't take away my autonomy," I told her, "if I decide to take my life, that decision is mine and mine alone."

"Of course, it always is," she replied, "but the sum of it is that if you won't sign a contract, I have to call the police to take you to the hospital so you can be committed."

"Okay, let me think on that."

After a couple of minutes, she interrupted my thoughts with, "How would your children feel? There are still people that need you."

I became enraged, "But the whole point is that I don't have anything to live for. And I can't and won't live for anyone else anymore. I have to live for myself, but I have to find a reason why."

After I spoke it, I realized what I needed and was able to sign a contract, adding my own addendum that if I felt I was a threat to myself, I would take myself to the hospital. Over the next few days, I talked to those closest to me, letting them know what was there for me and telling them what I was searching for.

Finally, after a conversation with a friend I hadn't seen in almost a year, I realized what I was missing: My Purpose.

You see, when I was a child, as mentioned in A Promise to Myself, my sole purpose in life became turning 18. With all that was happening, I reasoned all I had to do was make it to age 18 and my life would be in my hands, to do with as I pleased. While I was still 18, I met my now ex-husband. On our first date, as he told me what his children had already been through in their very young lives, I discovered my next purpose: to ensure they reached adulthood feeling loved and cared for.

Well, guess what? My youngest turned 18 just over a month ago. This left me totally without purpose. Also, since he's a quite independent young man and has been for some time, I started feeling purposeless back in June or so. But it took this situation with the family member and then my own to realize that purpose was what I was missing.

I'm pleased to announce that I have already discovered my next purpose: To Love and Care for Myself. You've probably already noticed me working on this to some degree, but I feel it's time to own it. So I'm going to spend the next chunk of my life working on discovering what makes me happy individually and then obtaining it. I'm also working on falling in love with myself, loving myself the way I've always wished someone would love me.

I'm not sure how long it will take me to find this purpose fulfilled, but I do hope that I'm more aware next time, so I can find one soon after.

I can say this, at least: having the purpose of loving myself and making myself happy makes it so much easier to swim and not sink when major stress comes along.

From Unlovable to Loved

Confession Time:

I LOVE love songs, always have.

After getting divorced three years ago, though, I started to see how cheesy and unrealistic they are, promising your undying love to just one person. Promising to be someone's everything and have someone be your everything...wow, that's a lot to ask of one person.

A couple of weeks ago, I was curled up in bed with a partner listening to the song, "All of Me," by John Legend, as we both admired the song and the artist's talent. Laying there in bed, next to my partner, I found myself thinking the same thing I've always thought at love songs, "Man, I would really love to be loved by someone like that some day."

Just before last weekend, a tragedy befell my family, something so in depth that I'm as of yet unwilling to talk about it in a public forum. The fallout of this happening left me sitting on my couch alone for most of last weekend, crying. I questioned my worth as a human being, wondered if I had anything to offer myself or the world. As I sat there, mired in my own, not loathing, but definitely not admiration for myself, my mind drifted back to that song and it just hit me:

I'M THE PERSON I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR

My entire life, all I've wanted is to be deeply and truly loved by one person. But at my core, while I never hated myself, I never believed myself to be lovable.

This same partner, when I relayed this to him months ago said, "I don't understand. You are so much more lovable than most people I've met. Really, you should walk around all day just basking in the love of everyone you know." And while I smiled and blushed at his words, I couldn't let them in.

And I realized that day last weekend that I've never felt loved because I never loved me. I've thought I'm a pretty great person, I can enumerate all of my positive features (the negative ones, as well), but I've always known, down to the bottom of my soul that I'm unlovable. These are the words that are whispered in my head every time someone tells me they love me.

But then the most amazing thing happened to me just this morning.

I was practicing the song, "All of Me," because it's just so perfect, beautiful and right within my natural vocal range, when suddenly, instead of having visions of some imaginary man singing to me, I imagined singing to myself. As I sang, tears of joy formed in the corners of my eyes and emotion over took my voice as I suddenly felt the powerful love that this song conveys.

FOR ME

I found myself singing this song to myself and was overwhelmed with how loved I felt.

Anyone who has ever met me knows that I radiate love for my fellow human being. I love deeply, powerfully and fiercely,

AND I HAVE FINALLY DECIDED I AM WORTHY OF THAT LOVE.

Walking Away

There's this song currently playing on the radio. The first time I heard it, I thought it was beautiful. I was driving in the car and as soon as I heard the piano introduction, I was hooked. I got home that evening and wanted to share it with my kids, so I looked up the YouTube video. Like many others, the song became even more poignant for me after seeing the video. Take a look:

Now here's what makes me different from most others: Most people, when they watch the video, become emotional at the scene where the elderly couple is introduced. Watching the emotion of the man as he is saying goodbye to his wife stirs great emotion. For me, though, I'm teary from the first scene. The scene of the little girl huddling on her bed, with a blanket wrapped around her, which she eventually pulls over her head.

I've mentioned bits and pieces of my childhood before, that things weren't good. So when I reacted with strong emotion to the little girl, I assumed I was simply identifying with her fear, her isolation, hiding under the bed to escape frightening scenarios. From there, I went on, always listening to this song with a touch of emotion, remembering each time the little girl who felt so alone. For that reason, I typically avoid hearing the song, I don't need to spend every day remembering my childhood: I find that best left for the occasional thought.

Then, a friend of mine posted to Facebook a cover of this song. The band covering the song is called Pentatonix and I absolutely love their music, I sang in an a cappella choir for eleven years. When I saw the video, I absolutely had to watch it, knowing the music would be even more beautiful than the original song. I commented before I clicked the link, "OMG, I know I'm going to cry!"

Sure enough, I did. I bawled my eyes out watching this video, crying so hard tears were dripping off my chin.

Afterward, because I take a walk down memory lane every time I hear this song, it finally dawned on me why it is this song touches me so much. It can't possibly be just the image of the little girl, she's not in the Pentatonix video.

No, what touches me is realizing I did exactly what this song suggests one might do: I walked away.

I've mentioned previously walking away is a big deal for me. One of the reasons I end up (and stay) in abusive/disrespectful relationships is I can't stand walking away from people. I felt like my parents walked away from me when I was a teenager, because they kept passing me back and forth, "My spouse has a problem with her, I need you to take her for awhile." "I can't handle the stress, I need you to take her back, I'll pay for her plane ticket." And so it went until I moved out on my own.

Wait. I moved out on my own.

In light of my previous recollections/thoughts from, "A Promise to Myself," I remember from a very young age I couldn't wait until I was old enough to get away. I promised myself over and over and over again as soon as it was legal for me to be on my own, I would move out. That is exactly what I did.

When I was thirteen, I needed out of my mother's house so bad, I wrote every adult relative I had asking if I could move in with them. When that failed (one of my aunts turned me in, read the letter to my mother), I turned to looking for my father. I hadn't seen hide nor hair of him in seven years, my last memory of him was him being arrested outside my house while I screamed and cried and was dragged away from the window by my older brother. The military police jailed him and held him long enough for my mother to pack up my brother and I and move us out of state.

When I went looking for my father, my mother reminded me he was a junkie and an alcoholic and abusive. "Not to me," was my reply, "he never abused me." With that, the search went on until I eventually located my father, who was five years sober at that point. How that ended can be found in, "Attention, Love, and Affection," after telling my father for over a year that I would leave and never look back if he didn't stop abusing me and start parenting me, I finally left.

This is the point of this story: My parents didn't leave me, I left them.

While I was homeless, shortly after moving out of my father's house, my mother begged me to come back and live with her. I told her, "I can't. I have to stand on my own now, I have to prove to myself that I can stand on my own and be okay."

So I did.

The little girl who sat huddled in a ball, rocking, crying, stroking her own hair, she got up and she walked away. She proudly and boldly looked her abusers in the eye and said, "No more. I will not take it anymore."

Just like the song says, they were the ones that I loved and I said goodbye. Now that's empowering.

A Promise to Myself

One day in mid 1992, a nearly thirteen year old girl sat huddled in the smallest place she could find. Here, she found solace. She felt reasonably hidden from her abuser and as safe as the moment could allow her to feel. As she sat rocking, crying, arms wrapped around her knees, pulling herself as close together as possible, she reflected on her life.

"Life only sucks because I'm not in control of it," she told herself. Rocking, stroking her hair now in long comforting strokes, she thought, "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. All I have to do is make it to 18, then I will have all the power and I can make myself happy, it doesn't matter what anyone else says, thinks, or does."

Fast forward twenty-one years.

The same girl, now a woman, divorced, with three children lays in bed reflecting on her life.

"Wow, I think I've let myself down. Yes, I've been in control all this time, but at the same time, I haven't. I let society tell me I needed someone else to make me happy, but look."

And look she did. She reflected on the previous weekend.

Through a number of circumstances, she found herself completely alone for the weekend. Only one other soul occupied her home for most of the weekend.

What did she do with herself?

She loved herself. Friday, Valentine's day, a day which she never really celebrated except in small ways as expected by others (an "I love you," here, a pack of Valentine's cards in school there), she decided that she needed to treat herself.

And treat herself she did. She took herself out to see--of all things--a love story. Sitting by herself in the theater, she laughed for 10 minutes straight and burst into random tears of joy and sorrow as a beautiful story unfolded on the screen before her. After the movie, she bought herself dinner, went home and watched an episode of her current show. As she headed to bed, she felt buoyant and alive. Overflowing with joy and happiness and a feeling of being loved. In a moment, she stopped and reflected on her feelings and the words surfaced to her mind, "I love me. I love being alone. I forget, so easily how much I love to be alone. Why? Because nobody loves me like I love me!!" And with that, she went to bed, smiling herself to sleep.

Over the course of the weekend, she went out and spent time with people, casual acquaintances whom she desired to know better and perhaps spend more time with. People with whom she had a good time, good conversation, good food. But at the end of it all, she returned home, alone.

But she did not feel alone.

And now, she remembers that day, all those years ago. She remembers promising to love herself, take care of herself, make herself happy. She remembers how she spent the first eighteen years of her life almost totally alone and hardly ever regretting it.

She remembers, too, all of the times where she has lain in her bed and cried for her loneliness. She remembers all of the times where she has felt that she is destined to walk the world alone. And in this moment, where she remembers all of this, she does not feel lonely. Nor does she feel sad.

Instead she feels powerful. Because she realizes she loves and is loved. She is surrounded by people: friends, family, lovers. Some she talks to nearly daily, some she talks to only when they remember to do so. But none of this means that she is lonely or unloved.

And in this feeling of power, she knows that it is her heart's earnest desire to live alone. Not in a state of never having company. Friends, lovers, family, these will always be welcome in her home for days at a time. But in the end, they will return to their space and her space will be her own.

Because no one loves her like she does and that's exactly the way she likes it.

Calling Mom

I talked to my mother on the phone last night for 2.5 hours. Time was, many years ago, where that was a short call for us. My husband, my kids, all knew, "When Grandma calls, find something else to do, Mom will be on the phone all day."

I had talked on the phone with my Mom for the first time in many months just two weeks ago when I was in the hospital for emergency surgery. My partner pointed out that I would be an absolutely dreadful daughter if I didn't call my mother to let her know I was in the hospital. He said, "If one of your daughters was in the hospital and only sent you an e-mail, don't you think you'd rip her uterus out next time you saw her?" Yeah, he can be a violent guy. But he had a point.

So what had me going so long without talking to my mom? Well, simply put, I had hit another life stage where I felt I simply had nothing in common with her and felt wounded by many perceived injustices both past and present.

And you know what?

I'm glad I called her.

I had forgotten, for whatever reason just how much she and I have in common. I am practically a carbon copy of that woman. And I've realized through the events of my life this year that what I once perceived as failing in her was simply my own naivete.

Why you ask?

Well, I saw her as harsher, less trusting, less believing in the goodness of others and the world. And yet, here I am, 34 years old and my own veil of innocence is being lifted. I'm starting to see the world a bit more realistically. I'm realizing that not everyone means well to their fellow human being and in turn, I'm becoming a little more skeptical and a little more cautious.

At the same time, my own children are now young adults. I find myself hitting that panic stage where I worry about their launches into being independent people. I'm questioning myself, my parenting, my choices, and everything in between. And in this questioning, I find understanding. Understanding for my mother and what I had previously perceived as slights against me as a person were simply her own worries, fears, questions of herself and her choices.

Last night, as we chatted, we talked about our differing perspectives during my teen years. She said, "I blame myself, you know. I should have tried harder to help you, to get you to do what I thought you ought to so that you would be in a better place now."

I said, "Mom, please don't blame yourself for that. That was me and my choices. You told me what you thought was the best path for me and I flat refused to take it. That's not your fault, that's mine. I don't think there was anything you could have said or done differently to cause me to change my mind, I was far too stubborn."

She replied, "You come by that honestly, you know. Not just from me, but your father, as well. We're both absolute mules when we think we're right."

I consoled, "Yeah, that's definitely me, Mom. But here's what I want you to know: Even though I now know you were right, I should have taken that path you suggested, you still raised one heck of a kid. You know I won't take shit from anyone and thanks to you, to you, Mom, I am one of the strongest people I know. Because of how you raised me, how you taught me to see the world, when life gets tough, I don't take that as a sign to quit, I take that as a sign to try harder."

"You know, honey, that's funny. That's how I've always seen the world. Whenever things get difficult and I fear I'm going to fall, I take that as a sign to fight harder. I wouldn't let anything or anyone keep me down if they manage to knock me down."

"I know, Mom, me too. And thank you, thank you so much for that. It doesn't matter what I thought of it when I was a kid, it's one of my strongest assets now and I can never thank you enough for bestowing that feature on me."

And now I remember why it is that my Mom and I can spend so much time on the phone. She is me, older and wiser, more learned about the world. Talking to her is therapeutic in so many ways, coming to terms with both who I've been and who I am and keeping an eye on who I will yet become. Because try as I might, I will always be her daughter and I'm damned proud to say as much.

Taking a Walk (Letting Go and Moving On)

I took a walk yesterday. It was probably the most random thing I've done in years. In fact, I can't recall the last time I just announced to my family, "I'm taking a walk y'all, I'll be back in awhile."

What was my motivation for such a strange action? Well, two-fold. First, my partner encouraged me to download an app for iPhone called Moves. It's a pedometer/tracker thingy that tracks your movement, places you go, how long you spend exercising. The first day, it showed me going to rehab and warming up on the treadmill for 15 minutes and coming up with a grand total of 2,108 steps for the day and indicated all of my activity throughout the day had burned 80 calories. Well, that's not going to help me lose weight. So I felt I needed to take a walk.

But the second and more important reason for my random walk out the door without a destination or even my wallet was that I needed to clear my head.

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I mentioned in my other blog that on our Familyversary, some close family friends decided they no longer wanted friendship with my family. Over the ensuing month, tensions rose to what felt the breaking point for me and mine. We were hurt and we didn't know what to do about it. Almost every last member of my family has abandonment issues and we couldn't help but feel abandoned by folks that we had called friend. More importantly, we had called them FAMILY.

So we set about moving on. But you can't really move on until you've let go.

And I didn't even know what I was letting go of.

A week ago we got a message from a member of the other family requesting a re-establishment of contact. I had just realized five days prior that I had lost something when I lost that relationship and I realized what it was.

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Historically, I am an extremely trusting person. As my son said in a recent conversation, I tend to run around handing out my trust willy-nilly to anyone I meet. But I haven't been that way lately. In fact, I held back quite a lot of trust in my current relationship, to the point where I was questioning myself constantly. Holding back trust is not who I know myself to be.

Then, starting in May of this year, I decided to start dating again. I am polyamorous after all and that typically denotes that one would have multiple partners. But I have not been having a lot of success dating. When I'm asked why, I come up with reasons, but ultimately I realized, the problem is not anyone but me.

Back in April, a part of me died. The part that openly loves and trusts anyone without any reason given--until such time as a person proves they're not worthy. Okay, maybe it's not dead, maybe it's just huddling in the corner of my mind, bruised and bleeding wondering why the hell it would want to get back in the world. And it's snarling like a wounded animal anytime anyone tries to get close.

This has caused me a crisis of character. This piece of me is absolutely fundamental to my being. So much so that people tend to not believe that I've had a rough life at all because this open love and trust is not characteristic of someone who has been violated as much as I have.

So who could have known this situation would be the straw that broke the camel's back?

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I mentioned the conversation where my son said I tend to run around willy-nilly handing out my trust to anyone I meet. The rest of that statement was my son telling me that I was no longer living in a fantasy world wherein I could do such a thing.

"Welcome to the real world, Mom," he said.

And I replied, "I don't like it, son. This real world does not make me happy. I've lived in my fantasy world for so long because I'm happy in it. I intentionally create myself that way to be happy. Isn't happiness important?"

And that's what I'm missing. This fundamental part of my being--open love and trust--it's my HAPPINESS.

And I can't let that go. I can't let anyone take that from me.

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Last night, on my walk, I wasn't thinking about anything in particular. I was just letting my mind wander. I stopped to take pictures of things I found interesting and/or beautiful as I'm wont to do on walks. And as I turned the corner of a path, out of my peripheral I caught color. It was the setting sun. I turned and beheld it's beauty. I took a picture.

Sunset

And then, it hit me: It's time for me to let go and move on.

This situation has been spilling over into every corner of my life (as situations are prone to doing) and I see it affecting my other relationships. Relationships with people that I love and hold dear. Relationships with people that love me just as powerfully as I love them. For the preservation of myself and my relationships (current and future), I need to move on.

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What does moving on look like? Well, I'm not going to instantly get that trust back, I don't think. And I may always trust a little less than I did before, life is change and change is growth.

But what I can do, what I will do is stop acting like what someone else does or does not do surrounding me means anything about me as a person. It has nothing to do with me. It never has and it never will.

Just like my success or lack thereof in dating has had nothing to do with those other people and entirely to do with me and my own perspective.

I have power over just one human being on the face of this earth: one heart, one mind. And I carry it with me everywhere I go.