Leanna
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THIS IS KATIE’S ESSAY…
The last most painful period of suffering (of course I want it to be the last), became a way of life for me. Like physical pain, my mental pain was very loud background noise that I didn’t want to listen to because it was too confusing and too scary. My life and marriage would blow open and then what? Every thing that I wanted to be true wasn’t and I couldn’t hold it together. I tried many external and destructive routes to get the happiness I thought I deserved mostly fueled by blame,shame, and resentment. My husband was the perfect target and the one having the affair. Passive aggressiveness became my mode of communication.
Why I decided to get sober, start learning and practicing meditation when I did is magically mysterious but it gave me the clarity that I needed to do things differently. I became aware that what I considered happiness was borrowed from other people’s lives making me feel very left out of my own.
When the time came to confront the the situation it was not planned, but the coming together of events made it so. I’m still amazed by the patience and composure that enabled me to move forward, predicated by much crying and consulting with trusted friends. When I look back at myself at that time I feel a great deal of compassion instead of the shame I had known to be myself before. This was powerful. I was being propelled by a force that I trusted would help me get out of a situation that was holding me back from living my best life. I had to learn to practice a retraining of my thoughts and actions when I became aware of the consequences to myself and others. This has not been easy and I learned the importance of discipline and process and patience and loving kindness.
Somehow I am able to feel compassion and love for my husband, not every day, all day but when I get out of my own way and realize that the there is so much more I could be giving instead of taking only what I want . When I think about the depth of the pain and sadness I was experiencing, it felt primal. The hurt inside hollowed me out and I had to learn how go through it to fill myself up with with new experiences . It magically gave me courage and I began to love myself more. I’m actually pretty impressed that I am where I am today, my life is beyond my thoughts, more than my thoughts, more about my responsibilities for the actions I take to move beyond the thoughts that take me away from my best self.