Letting go and letting god is a concept that I’ve struggled with in my own recovery. Letting go and taking responsibility is more my jive. Life has been a long hard road for me. Like most people in the world, I’ve had huge obstacles to overcome. I am not unique in any way and nor are my experiences. The universal understanding between all humans is pain and discomfort in our emotional lives. We communicate that through our words, but mostly through our actions and behaviours. Most things we do in a day are designed to prevent pain, discomfort and loss. When we are not taking care of our basic needs such as eating and sleeping we are engaged in distraction. We seek out ways to prevent us focusing on our inner lives, keep ourselves addicted to anything at all, and make that the issue.
Lessons became my higher power
What makes us unique in our existence and experience is how we manage our pain and discomfort. It’s different strokes for different folks when it comes to healing. For me a higher power as I thought I understood it became all too confusing. Eventually I started focusing on what lessons I was learning and applied that as the higher outcome of difficult situations. I’m a slow learner when it comes to matters of the heart though, and I think that’s because, having had relentless emotional hills to climb, pain became normal. Resilience became my super power. I might get knocked down, but I always seem to be able to get back up and fight again. It took me many years to realize that it was the fighting that was the problem. The endless searching for the pain that was so familiar started to wear me out. Chaos was my master and I was deeply in love with it. I thought I was getting away with the constant battles, but I read a quote somewhere that stopped me in my tracks. It said that trauma is stored in the body and revealed in relationships.
No escape
Damn! And so began the lessons. Those words hit me in my heart like a dagger, sharp and precise. I had gotten away with nothing. I’ve had life long issues with chronic illness and chronically bad relationships. I wasn’t so tough after all. Instead of constantly picking fights with life, I now had to take responsibility to face my inner conflict and heal. Might seem like the easier option for most but for me it was horrifying. I finally understood what it means to be possessed by evil spirits. Every traumatic moment I endured now lay inside me contaminating my very being. It ate at my brain and caused me to act out my trauma in every relationship I had. Here is a moment of honesty – I still act out my trauma in my relationships. It caused illness in my body since I was a child and nearly ended my life on several occasions. My addictions were merely distractions to keep me from dying from heartache. Many times I wished my addictions would take my life instead of the slow agonizing death from heartbreak.
Grief
I’m still going through my exorcism and some days the grief I feel for the life lost to me is excruciating. I grieve not only for what could have been, but for my lover, chaos. Getting acquainted with sanity is a completely new concept for me and I miss the danger. I am and always have been deeply troubled. Peace stares me in the face daily, and I stare back not yet sure if I am ready to allow it in. First of all, I need to make space for it, by enticing out the trauma that has grown deep roots in my body and at some point I will grieve for that too. Just for today though, I will choose to let go and take responsibility for myself, for my healing and for the life that circumstance has chosen for me. More shall be revealed.
7 Comments
This is quite beautiful and insightful .
Thank you
I just wanted to say how captivated I am by what you wrote. I resonate: “that trauma is stored in the body and revealed in relationships.”
A page out of my own book, “I finally understood what it means to be possessed by evil spirits.”
I think you may have just stumbled upon your greatest gift: writing. Thanks for sharing.
This was so raw, honest and insightful it broke my heart. Thank you for sharing
The grief is intense. Thank you for sharing. I feel the same on so many levels.
Touched me on so many levels! Especially wishing you could just no longer exist because of the pain.
I can’t say that to anyone because then I feel guilt. I’m being selfish. Reading this from you has actually kick started how I need to fight harder!
Thank you
Nicky- Thank you so much for sharing your journey and the ways these issues in our tissues find their way to live expression in our tissues and relationships. I am gaining on this whole reality, and am glad the healing comes in stages and across time for those of us who fought and still do–even though my relationship with my HP has become my main source of being plugged into this planet. Still working on other realities of taking care of the diabetes and remembering to balance eating, friendships, and feeling as though I am responsible for taking care of others/abandoning Self. I pray and give my day to HP, then get busy moving to get things done. Slowing down to focus on my needs is still a learning in process! I appreciate you lots, and trust I will find my answers on balancing all things in time.
Nickyo, thank you for this post. It is so honest, and just as others, I can see myself in so many places. The one that got me as: “Peace stares me in the face daily, and I stare back not yet sure if I am ready to allow it in.” In my mind and spirit, I know I want this more than anything else in the world. And yet, my actions are not aligned with that. The inner resistance is huge. So it is one moment at a time for me. After 5 years in recovery, I have turned a couple of corners in such important ways… I know I am on the right path, even if some days I am still on my knees asking God for help. He does. I can see it clearly now, whereas before that was very confusing to me, too. God is actually mentioned or alluded to in at least 9 of the 12 steps. We do need a power greater than ourselves. We simply cannot do it alone.