I hate Sundays. All my bad feels that've been lurking in my brain for the week come out of hiding and try to scare the pants off me, try to hurtle me into a dark pit of depression that twists my mind into thinking nothing but just ending it all.
And that's just not acceptable for me. Not anymore.
So I'm trying to be more proactive about this, to look at my pain from different perspectives. Like today. I was in a pretty major funk for some reason, doesn't matter, and then I found this. The following is a blurb I read on facebook, by the great author Elizabeth Gilbert whom I follow, the author who wrote the book Eat Pray Love which of course we all know was made into a major successful movie.
Anyways, without further ado, just read this:
Now to be honest, I never even watched the video she was introducing through this (and pardon the technical awkwardness, i had to screenshot it from my phone as i haven't figured out how to copy stuff from facebook yet..).. but this bit of prose was all i needed. Really stuck with me, turned me around in my ugly thoughts.
Made me realize the absolute beauty there is in heartbreak. oh not at the moment, of course, not even three years later. In fact, i'd just been lamenting about how my life has been nothing but one long string of heartbreaks, one after the other. Except for about 15 years of it, though, when i lived in a cocoon of comfortable numbness. A place where i was unable to experience heartbreak, not very easily, anyway, because i had convinced myself that i had all that i needed. I was secure in many ways, and on the outside it looked like i had the perfect world. blah blah blah i've said this all before. Until a wrecking ball came along, crashed my glass house and made me pitifully aware of what i didn't have, and gloriously anticipating of what i wanted to have. Even had a shape and a face to what i thought i wanted. But as i set my heart on that, it became like a mirage. Every time i thought it might be real, the glass was shattered again. My heart broke over, and over, and over, and over again. Yet i didn't lose hope.
Till today. Realizing i've been a fool. No, i don't regret a minute of it. Instead, I am wildly thankful that the wrecking ball came and shattered me, tore away the bubble wrap that had artificially insulated my heart for all these years. Began the process of healing some old, scabby emotional wounds of the past, and set me on a new path, a new vision. Back to the old, real me. Feels so good to find my real authentic self again, and it keeps getting realer and better every day.
Will i ever find true love, in the romantic sense? Maybe not. And that made me sad. I was pondering this on my walk through a woods today, and I faced the fact that yes, i can easily imagine myself one day dying on my own, having never, ever ever experienced true love. The kind of true love that's not just in your head, but shared in person, with another person. It may never be had for me in this lifetime. And, maybe that's ok. Like the author of this blurb above said about heartbreak:
Heartbreak makes you feel your humanity, and "it's so good".
Heartbreak can be an invitation for incredible change,
an invitation for heightened self-knowledge and self-exploration.
Heartbreak is a great teacher, if you can believe that every message it sends you is for your own benefit. "But you gotta be able to stay awake and aware and compassionate and loving through the whole experience. And that's hard."
oh don't i know how hard that is. And the message i think i'm hearing today, is, don't be fooled. That wrecking ball experience may have been only that. Just a wrecking ball to smash me out of my glass house. I may have foolishly put my hopes in it meaning something more, but by now, by the looks of things, I shouldn't be so stupid. Not stupid anymore, but thankful. Thankful that my heart is now a heart of flesh that can feel deeply, hurt deeply, and deeply appreciate, most of all, the love of Jesus, in a deeper and more intimate way than ever before. Of course I'm not done suffering yet. There's more hardship to go before i can finally be free. Maybe never to obtain that holy grail of human love, no, not me. But to live more fully, deeply, and to live totally free, never to be locked up in a fake illusion of security again.
Thank you, dear heartbreak. I embrace you. You taught me to live again.
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