Feel It to Heal It
You will get through it. People would say this to me and I would think, “HOW?” HOW??
It takes time but it is true.
I realized I liked to keep busy so I didn’t have to feel anything. I didn’t have to feel my sadness, my pain, my betrayal.
I didn’t want to have to deal with any of it. I didn’t want to face reality. I didn’t want to admit that my life was changing.
I remember one therapy session, and I’ve had many, I remember succumbing and collapsing into how I felt. I was ready to move forward but I knew the way forward for me was to go completely through it. No more sugar coating, no more bullshit. I wasn’t someone, and still am not someone, that can just move on without fullying thinking about it first. I saw friends go through some really difficult situations to seemingly move forward so simply. Did they really? I know I’m not that person.
In that therapy session I remember saying, “Today, I just need to feel it. I need to be this little girl curled up in a ball, sitting in the corner, alone.” “Don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, don’t ask me how I feel or what I’m thinking.” “I am the little girl in the corner trying to process my life.” I was sad and I was grieving. My life was changing. I felt alone and I knew my life was changing at a pace I could in no way control. I had come to a place of knowing that no one could get me through it but me. It was a journey I needed to take alone because this is my story and no one can know exactly how I feel.
So in my next therapy session, I said, “I’m ready to talk about how I feel and if I’m going to carve out the deep caverns that are myself, I’m going to carve them all out.” I went deep. I went full in. I talked about the breakdown of my marriage and how I had given it my absolute best to try to save it. How it takes two people to make it work and I can only do so much. And to go even deeper, I came to the realization that the loss of my brother when I was nine and being bullied in high school all defined who I had become too.
I talked in a way that I became an open book where I do not take anything personally. I was no longer afraid. I have nothing to protect. That’s what it truly was. I was protecting everyone else as if they were more important than myself. Now I am fully, deeply me. And I love me no matter how someone tries to make me feel.
When I think about some of those really dark days, I think about how far I have come in my journey and how my new life is just getting started.
I am me and I am proud of what I am becoming...
XO JessicaAnne
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