“If you don’t allow yourself to move past what happened, what was said, what was felt, you will look at your present and future through that same dirty lens. “
– Angel Chernoff
Perfect is NOT perfect at all. So many of us strive for a perfection that somehow erases past traumas. And, it cannot be done without going back and finding out exactly what happened. Logical, unemotional, reasons that go beyond disassociation, beyond misplaced guilt, beyond misplaced shame. It is absolutely not easy, but is absolutely imperative. We cannot change it all, we cannot find any meaning to it all. There is none. No matter what or why, there is a what happened next and next and next. Sometimes we have to surround to the unknown and get on with getting on; healing for ourselves, from deep within ourselves. We have choices, now, that we did not have back then.
Sometimes we surrender to our feelings and we get stuck, full of anger, and, yes, misplaced responsibilities, Letting go of trying to understand the WHY, is futile and we get stuck if we keep replaying it over and over, acting it out over and over, and it goes against everything we think we have to do – to find out the WHY.
Blame keeps us tied back to the trauma(s\) as well. As does revenge. Sometimes we have to rewrite a new beginning for ourselves that does not completely negative what happened, but takes the power away from it and taking responsibility for our hereafter. We have heard, no doubt, that there is survival, then overcoming, then thriving. Some of us stay stuck on the surviving and we get lost in overcoming because we simply choose to stay stuck in the victimization (no matter what kind). It almost becomes dear to us because we know it and it becomes almost comfortable to stay where we know what we are dealing with. It is terrifying, sometimes, to change the mindset and realise that there is overcoming to deal with and make happen for ourselves. Wee do have choices. We can choose how we look at what happened and then what we, eventually, chose to do with it all. We can et trauma define us or we can rewrite the ending of our story, step by step.
Yes, events can change us, but we also have the choice to understand that memory is changed every time we revisit it. We are not the same, our offender (s) are not the same, and our perspective is now one of victim and added on to this are the years passed. And we are now revictimizing ourselves by hanging on to the event(s) and not finding ways to heal. We, now, have the choice of how we perceive what happened. We can choose if that is to stay our story or if we are going to rewrite the story through healing. We can choose to see how we can be because we survived and are learning how to overcome.
Trauma, of any kind, is a harsh teacher. It is something you experience, be it a loss, a betrayal, any kind of experience that is abusive to you, not that it would be to anyone else. It is private and personal and something we simply cannot dwell on. But, you learn from any of it. You learn to dwell in that house of darkness and, perhaps, despair, or you learn the lesson that is offered.
Losing my soulmate was crueller than anything that ever happened in my life. I would have traded anything to be able to go back to my old life, but, now, five years later, I realize there has been some real growth in me for it all and for the way it made me suffer, I had no choice but to take one step in front of the other and get on with living without him. It sucked all the joy out of me and I am just barely gaining some of that back. I have learned to create my own joy. I have learned that I am a good woman. I have learned that there is something divine in grief. It changed me. Definitely!
In this new perspective, that faded the sorrow, has slowly brought me to a new me. I see how it matured me, spiritually, the most. I learned how important it is to comfort and to be compassionate with self. I have learned that I am, indeed, the captain of my own ship. There is no use looking back and wishing for fallen stars to return to the sky. I learned, like the poem says, to grow my own flowers.
I have learned to use what I was able to get through – those seven weeks of giving more than I had to give in order to keep him home until his last breath – moving and flying home to Alberta within three days – wandering in a foreign land of loss – learned to make decisions again – learning to let life go on…living is what we do. We either live well or live in a dark deep well. And you learn…and you learn… and you learn that life and perfection are how ever you define them from deep in your soul. Let us all redefine perfect for ourselves, not according to others idea of what perfection is, should be, would be, could be. Perfection is an illusion.
©Carol Desjarlais 18.10.20
Art piece done with "Perfect Not Perfect" with Maria Pace Wynters
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