Surviving To Thriving: Why I Chose To Leave Everything Familiar To Face My Greatest Fear....

"I want to go back to what is comfortable.  I want to go back to what I know.  I want to go back to the house where I knew who I was.  The place where I knew my role.  It is a comfortable place....but I can't.  Sigh.  There is a reason I had to pack my things and leave that familiar life.  I had to leave the safety of the walls I knew for eight years. The security I could always depend on. There was a reason I had to say good-bye to the dog I raised from the time she was eight weeks old and a reason I had to painfully separate from the man to whom I said, In sickness and in health till' death do us part."

It has been almost eight months now since I left that house and embarked on my own heroes journey.  I have felt like I have been in the wilderness for months and I am just starting to settle into this place I now call my home.  I do not know "my role" or "my identity" right now.  In fact, that has been something I have been working on rediscovering since I had my trauma break down/open on October 11, 2011.

Since then nothing has been the same

Last year at this time the thought of what I am doing right was sending chills through my spine.  Fear, self-doubt and self-blame paralyzed me.  The doubts were from seeds planted long ago in the fertile soil of my youth and watered for years with painful words from a man who convinced me that I would never be able to survive on my own in this world. A man who wanted to protect me from the pain of the world. A man who tried to convince me nobody else would ever love someone like me. Those words along with a host of other demeaning words and actions would be repeated through out the years.  Eventually those seeds became strong held beliefs that grew like crabgrass weed taking over my mind and body. Weeds that twisted and suffocated out any belief in me that I could be good enough, capable enough or lovable enough.

In the 12 years I was connected to that man I had every material thing I could possibly dream of: cars, million dollar condo in a big city, education, clothes, credit cards, etc.  I snapped my fingers and it appeared.  No matter what.  In the beginning I was naive and it was feeding all my twenty something year old fantasies.  Then time passed by.   I had everything I could ever want on the outside.  I had zero self-esteem and zero self-love on the inside.  They had both been slowly stripped away from me through years of emotional abuse, manipulation, and constant fear.  A fear that at any time everything was going to be taken away from me and I would be homeless.

 For the longest time I did not believe I could take care of myself.  So I didn't.  The co-dependency that was developed in my childhood grew even stronger in adulthood.  I became angry, vindictive, lost, and I fell head first into a world of substances that I discovered could take all the pain of the reality I created away.  I was filled with nothing but self-hatred, anger, and unforgiveness towards myself and this other person, and life in general.

I did not know I had the power within me to make a change

 I did not know I had a choice

Then I found the world of recovery.  A small glimmer of something called hope started to catch my eye.  I followed it's light and slowly my life began to change.  The recovery world helped me cultivate just enough inner strength and self-esteem to start standing up for myself.  I started to learn about the word, choice.  I chose to start taking my power back and releasing myself from that person. It didn't happen over night but one day it finally did.

I had a year and two months into recovery and was just starting experience living on my own when I met my would be husband.  I had barely scratched the surface of getting in touch with the deep emotional pain I held within my cells, muscles, and bones.  Pain that had been locked up inside of me from my youth up until I met him. At that time I had no clue of the repressed trauma that was going to explode out of me down the road after we were married.  I had no clue the bones of the person I had been from birth up until October 11, 2011 would suddenly shatter into hundreds of dusty pieces all around.  I did not know that every year since then I would be picking up those bones and rebuilding a whole new skeleton while La Loba, the Woman Wolf, sang over them bringing me back to life. I just knew I was attracted to this man. He was attracted to me. It was game on.  We met on Thanksgiving day and we were married by April.

I did not heal any part of my past before I entered into marriage.  I just dragged a whole lot of baggage into it.  After a while of being married I found myself settling back into familiar dependent patterns.  These patterns started to trigger deep wounds of dis empowerment and victim hood within me.  I hated those feelings.  Those feelings included a seething anger that was always boiling right under my skin.  There would be good days and bad days.  I worked really hard on releasing the anger.

Healing

 I spent years doing the deep inner work I was guided too.  I wanted inner peace.  I wanted freedom. The anger was what I had to listen and pay attention too.  It was my messenger.  Since that fateful day in 2011 the underlying message had been that I needed to go out into the world and stand on my own two feet.  I kept ignoring the message out of fear, but, it would not go away.  The messages kept coming to me at different times through different mediums including the guidance system deep within my stomach.

IT WAS TIME TO FACE MY GREATEST FEAR

I had to face myself and find out what I was made of.  My wings had been clipped in my 20's and I did not learn how to fly like others my age.  My next phase of trauma healing would not be able to be done within the cocoon of a marriage. My husband and I knew our  relationship was not working in its current incarnation.  I knew on my part what had to be done if  there was ever going to be any hope.

Where I had to go I had to go alone. Loving myself and doing what needed to be done to cultivate that had to come first.  If I was ever going to have a chance at having a healthy relationship with myself and perhaps one day a healthy relationship with a man this journey had to be taken.  It was time for me to release the baggage that I did not give myself the chance to release before.

I HAD TO KNOW I COULD MAKE IT ON MY OWN IN THIS BIG WORLD

It was so painful to leave my husband because I did not want to hurt him.  I did not want to cause pain to another human being again. Even though by staying as long as I did was still  hurting him.  I was so frustrated that this had to affect our relationship like it did.  In true co-dependent fashion I automatically took the blame for all it.  I have gotten alot better at releasing some of it.  Yet I still wonder,  "How could I leave a man who truly loved me through some pretty painful and terrifying times- trying times a lesser man would have probably run from?" I'm still coming to terms with that part but for now all I know is....

 It had to be done

Trauma recovery is brutal. I did not ask to have to hurt others in the name of healing myself.   I did not ask for what happened to me in my youth  to unconsciously set the course of the rest of my life until October 11th.  This shit is painful.  This path I chose is not for the faint of heart.  Yes.  I am scared.

It is the wilderness for me

I am still alive though.  I have a job(s), food in my stomach, a roof over my head, and friends that support me.  Everyday is different and seems to bring with it different emotions to feel and walk through. Some days I am curled up in the fetal position with tears streaming down my face, while other days I am punching the shit stuffing out of a heavy bag.  Still other days I just want to lay on my couch and stare out the window. There are plenty of good feeling days too. The most important thing for me is cultivating a simple life.  A simple low to no chaos structured life.  I have never really known what that is.  It is vitally important for my recovery.  I am facing what I need to face and healing through it the best that I can.  I may be scared, but, at least I can say I am doing it and have been for close to eight months now.  I know the fear will lessen as time goes by.  All I can do is put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward one day at a time.

I am not a helpless girl who needs rescued anymore.

I am a woman who is growing stronger everyday in many ways.

I am my own parent now.

I am my own protector.

I am a survivor.

I am a thriver.

I am learning who I am
all over again.

I am learning to love myself.

I am being reborn.

I am my own heroine.


If you made it to the end I want to say thank you from the deepest recesses of my heart for witnessing a sliver of my story.  For some reason it was supposed to be shared.  I followed the call and wrote what I felt comfortable sharing. I trust there is a reason. This small part is enough for now.  I will be following up with more blog posts regarding my journey as I am "called" to do so.  I will soon be introducing a whole new blog and facebook page that will be a more current reflection of my re-discovery journey "from surviving to thriving."  I am waiting until mercury goes direct to introduce it.  Until then I will be staying here posting in Recovery Rising.

Namaste. Sat Nam. Aho. Blessed Be.

-Kristianna