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Monday, August 12, 2013

Hindsight

I have these moments where a new revelation about my past comes to light. It's one of those times when everything you have been thinking about just makes sense and you fit another piece to the puzzle of "Who Am I Today?"
There are days that I feel like Rip Van Winkle. I open my eyes, I yawn and stretch and then ask myself how is it that the world changed so much while I was sleeping.

I hadn't slowed down until recently. For many years, I was what I coined as "Terminally Busy." If I wasn't restlessly cleaning, having one child and then another and a another....I was busy trying to research my interests. Mostly I'd be in church, thinking that would be a 'safe haven.' I was always avoiding facing my problems though. If I kept constantly busy, my mind would be occupied and I wouldn't have to realize how really bad things were getting in my life.
Now I understand : I was in survival mode.

At some point, I had to stop running. I had to learn honesty-first, with myself than with those around me.That was when I had started waking up and realized that I had been sleep-walking through my life and not engaging in time for myself or any of the people that I loved.

My children would ask if I remembered a particular event, something that really stood out in their minds and on more than one occasion, I had to admit that no...I could not. Somehow, my mind kept drifting elsewhere and babies would cry and dinners needed cooking and I had nothing left to give including my attention.

Suffering with depression and an anxiety disorder, kept me in a hyper-vigilant state. I would become  paranoid, obsess about every little thing my partner said and did because I didn't trust him. I felt no self worth and so I couldn't understand why anyone else would want me either, (I still battle with that everyday.)

I think that having been on medication for my disorders for the better part of a year, has allowed me to see how crazed I was. It's as if another person was living my life. She still tries to break through every now and then.

Overcoming negative thought is and always has been a hard value for me to learn. Unfortunately,  I am self-defeating in many areas. I've been overcome with mistrust and suspicion and when my depression strikes, I feel like any complement I receive, any 'pat-on-the-back', is merely someone being kind and patronizing. It is difficult for me to find value in myself although others seem to.

I am careful now to protect myself from spiritual vampires. People who want to argue about whether or not God is real. Is there such a thing as mental illness or is it all just Satanic oppression rather than a brain chemistry problem? I have come to a place where I am not up to proving my ideas or research. I simply say, "Everyone has a right to their own beliefs" and end it there. To the spiritual vampire however, often this is not enough and they try to bait me into a discussion.

I'm done. I have nothing to prove. I am who the Creator has made me and there seems to always be room for improvement. That's between me and God. One good thing about this realization is that my faith in God grows deeper.

In hindsight, what could I have done differently? Could I have somehow prevented my mind from affecting me the way it has? Am I deficient in some way that life is something I just don't get? There are way too many what-ifs. There is no possibility of renting a time-machine for the night and re-doing the trouble spots in my life. I can only accept who I was, who I used to be. I can take responsibility for today, minute-by-minute but the past is gone. Only the effects, like endless ripples in a pond, can still be felt.

Sometimes I can rise above the feelings of remorsefulness for the past, the false guilt that whispers to me, telling me I will never be good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, or happy. Those times are brief yet they are there and the past fits the edges of a puzzle that makes a full portrait of who I am.