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I forgot to live my own life . Marriage was a long time to be away from myself .
I didn ’ t feel loved for who I was — especially not in my marriage — so I believed I never would be . I checked out . Went to sleep . And was awakened only by an explosion of epic proportions .
After the dust settled , I had a choice . I could either stay numb and go back to sleep . Or , I could face my fears . I could embrace change . I could stop living my life in reaction to others . Own up to desire .
And so the journey began .
The journey to knowing , deep in my essence , that I am loved . No matter what I do or don ’ t do . Even if I don ’ t do anything I will be loved .
But how ? I needed courage . I found it in my body .
My body — flesh and bone — a treasure chest . Its cellular secrets under lock and key until the moment they were ready to be freed . The thaw came that way : an instant , a window , an opening . If I ’ d left sooner , I would not have been able to stay away . If I ’ d stayed a moment longer , it would have been radical self-betrayal .
I remember leaving for the last time . I bought a clean new mattress just days before , knowing it was a last offering to a lost time . I quietly told the truth to someone safe . There was the night I thought I heard him coming for me — first hope , then fear , then resignation . I remember finally asking for help . I remember when I didn ’ t think all the help was going to help . I remember when it finally did . I remember all the hours
around the hours . Those hours building the skeleton of a leaving . Those hours of bone .
I thought it was just about a marriage ending . But it was about so much more . Mourning the marriage , but also mourning the self I had been . Making room for the one I was becoming . That one — the new me — who could not go back . Who could not survive in such a dry climate .
Or could she ? She who so much wanted to go back . How to hold on to that part of me ? Simply hold on to it and not act ?
Uncertainty . The tension of opposites . How , just when we think we have landed , we are actually further unearthed . Ground must be restored , but not through stillness . Stillness will not satisfy . I discovered life as breath : fluidity is the only ground we can seek .
I remember the instant my marriage was over . Feeling like a failure for not fixing him . For not making the marriage work . For staying too long or not long enough . Waiting for him to sign the divorce papers . And also secretly wishing he would break down the door . Come back for me . How the
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