How long is this journey?

When I started this blog, I began a journey. A journey of self discovery. I did it with a purpose. I knew what I was doing and I knew it needed to be done. I had closed off my anger, and pain many years ago….Locked away in a closet and threw away the key were all the bad feelings that I couldn’t deal with any more.

I had allowed myself to live with the pain and anger for two years, when it all happened. When I lost my children, I lost my family, I lost myself. Those first two years were the hardest years of my life.. I was sure they were the hardest years of anyone’s life. I begged God on a daily basis to let me die and end the torment. If I was alone at all, for any time, I was curled into the fetal position, sobbing and pleading with God to stop the pain. For two years this went on…behind closed doors… I couldn’t let anyone see it but it was always there. Over and over, I kept remembering something my step mother had said many times during my life;

 “God will never put more on you than you can handle.”

But it was of no comfort, because I was not handling this pain at all. I knew I couldn’t keep it up… I felt …. Forgotten. God had forgotten me… The pain just got worse and worse and God had forgot to turn it off and soon I would implode because it was indeed more than “I” could handle! At some point I decided that I must have been so evil that I was sentenced to hell. I was sure that my life was the “hell” that everyone warned about. So this was how it was. You didn’t die to go to hell… You lived.

And I laid in secret, in my fetal position and begged God to forgive my evilness and release me from this hell. Everyday, every night, for two years, I begged, I cried, I screamed for escape from my own hell.

Then one day, I just accepted it. I “knew” that there was no release for me. I could find no way out. This was all I had, my hell.. It was all I would ever have again. I stopped begging for relief from the pain. I accepted that I was evil and I had to pay for it… Forever.

A strange thing happened when I accepted the pain. Somehow, when I stopped fighting for relief, I was able to shut out the pain. I shut out the pain that was always there in my chest. I didn’t dwell on it, because I accepted as part of my normal life…Some how, this made it possible to forget the pain… The anger… I simply shoved it into that “closet” and closed the door. And I lived again. I can’t say that it was like freedom from the pain, because it was if the pain had never existed. I had completely eradicated it… Or so I thought…

What I didn’t know, all those years, was that when I locked away the “hurt” I had to lock away the memories…and a part of myself. The only way I could forget the bad parts, was to forget the good parts as well. I couldn’t lock away the pain of loosing my children, if I didn’t lock away the memories of being a mother.

Becoming a mother shaped who I was…loosing my children was tearing away part of myself… Forgetting the pain of that was loosing myself. I had to start over. I had to rebuild who I was… I became a different person. In truth, I never liked this new person I had become… But I had to do it to survive.

When I began to remember… I found that closet door and found a tiny crack and tried to peak into it. What I discovered was that I had not locked away all my pain in that closet after all. I had locked myself into the closet and everything else was out side….The person I was… Life… And yes all the pain that goes with it is just outside that closet door. And so my journey began.

The first time I had a “revelation” I thought wow, look at me, I’m out in the real world again! I felt elated that I had beaten down the denial so easily. I had found myself again and I was so proud. Then I bumped into a wall. Bam! What was that?! A wall? How could there be a wall out here? Sure enough though, I bared the bruises from that wall.

Finally, I realize the truth. I have begun the journey, but only just.. I haven’t stepped out of that closet yet… I haven’t even found the door knob yet… I managed to build a window and let some light in.. But it is still to easy to shut the curtains on the light, when I feel the pain…The pain is so bad. It is just as bad as I remember. It’s too much some times and I can’t take it, I can’t relive this…But I have to. I know that. And so I peak past the curtains, even open them a bit again… Until the pain is too much and I close them again.

How long is this journey? How long will it take to tear down the curtains… When will I find the lock? Can I turn that door knob? With each new discovery, I hope I gain strength, strength enough to make it out all the way.

I can’t go back… I know that… But I have to learn to go forward. I can’t go forward until I am completely able to face my past…How long is this Journey?