Updated: Jan 29, 2020
I feel stuck. Your text from the other night still reads the same to me. It felt very harsh but I knew there was more behind it. That you are struggling. If I’m honest, it’s hard to feel that this came out of a bad day though, when the theme seems to be reoccurring. It’s certainly not just you – it’s both of us. Thank you for your apology. I do appreciate and accept it. I think that stuck is the wrong word. Stuck would mean that we don’t see or know a way to change. It’s like a circle. I/we keep going around seeing the same things and I feel like I have not been successful at changing, letting go and just getting off the part of the circle that is broken. I am just talking to you. I hope you read it this way. I just need to talk. I have been holding so much inside and feel increasingly afraid to talk, to voice my opinions, my wants – having the experience of being put down for them – or feeling that I am. I even avoid my friends more and more these days. Seems futile at times. Not all the time, but when I get into this place it just feels like depression. Everything – work included becomes dull and a struggle.
Then I see things on TV or read. The latest – Sense8 – 2nd season. God works in mysterious ways. I love the light in that show. The friendship, the purpose and hope even though they are all struggling from their lives and running from a monster who in reality, is all a part of them. A recent episode was title and had a line in it - “Fear Never Fixed Anything”. It stopped me in my tracks. I can relate to it on so many levels. Fear is such an undermining excuse not to do or feel so many things. I know that the only way life moves forward is through change. Doing the things that at first seems uncomfortable. Addressing a need not just going around it.
You have your opinion and your voice but telling anyone, much less your husband - that if he disagrees with your opinion, one of us is out of the house and on top of it, saying you cannot live or love any man, your husband in this case - who "agrees" in any part with someone that you do not agree with, sounds like someone who has already decided about the person they are with. That’s what bothered me and it’s what continues to ring in my gut. It’s a lot of contempt with not much attempt to talk lately. We both keep trying to communicate but even when we do, when we have that moment of connection, it gets bumped because we run behind the walls we have both set up.
I feel that you "know" and have decided that many people don’t understand you and that - I especially, won't and don’t understand you and that you can’t talk to me about many things… but, here is what I have learned about you:
You have a great appreciation for your heritage, your culture, your history, where your family came from & how hard they worked to get and stay here. You appreciate and respect the love that came to be and is because of them and others like them. You want your children and others to understand and appreciate this as well. You value and are learning to respect your important place as a woman and human being in this society. You seek out the voice of compassion not the self-righteousness of a fist, of spirit not ego, of peace not war. You feel we are going backwards not forwards, that “they” are getting it wrong. Wrong about our food, our bodies our direction in society. You fear that there will be repairable damage done to our society and our children – physically and spiritually and that the world as we “know” it is a scary place that is getting even scarier. You have compassion for life itself, for its preciousness. You understand pain because you have had much of it in your life and therefore have more empathy than many. You appreciate family and friends like never before and believe that family is not about blood but about support, acceptance and being there for one another. You appreciate and value the relationship with your mother and love her more today than ever, even though you understandably struggle and wrestle with who she was to you in the past. You have chosen to turn this pain, as much as you can each day, into something useful for your family and the people around you. You try not to judge others – even though deep inside you are constantly judging yourself. You despise comparison because nobody’s story is the same and because it minimizes what you feel about whatever is being compared to. You struggle with loving yourself as much as you understand the importance of loving yourself and continue to grow each day in this practice of self-love because you feel it is the best way. You know running away from things is not the answer anymore but struggle with what to do when you are just standing still. You want to contribute and build up, not break down. Perhaps most importantly, you want to feel that the people in your life have your back and they will appreciate and love you as much as you do them. Do you really believe I don’t get it or understand you?
I just want you to know I do care. I do love you. I want to know how to get back to good and if you want to and believe we can get back there.
For me, the above letter is a reminder of where I came from. I spent so much time fighting against others trying to prove or make it better until I finally learned to just let it go. It is out of my control and with this... life moved on.
This is "Life In 180".