Begin Within

For the most part, people perceive me to be a strong woman. I’m independent. I’m confident. I’m one of the last people anyone would expect to end up in a really messed up/borderline abusive relationship, yet somehow, a few years ago, I found myself in one. I couldn’t have predicted it. He adored me. He treated me like a queen. He thought I was perfect. That is, until he inevitably realized that I wasn’t perfect. And once he got comfortable in our relationship he became jealous and controlling. And because he couldn’t control me, he got mean. Later he’d apologize, would promise it would never happen again, but of course it would. I offered him the benefit of the doubt. “Most of the time he was wonderful. He was only that way sometimes,” I’d tell myself. I wanted it to work.

Let me be clear; this is not a pattern for me. I tend to attract healthy, loving, evolved relationships. This behavior was foreign to me, which was part of the reason I didn’t recognize it for what it was. And besides, how could this happen to “ME?”

From the time it became unhealthy, I let it continue for less than three months, but it was exhausting. And I let it go on for three reasons. #1 –I loved him. #2 – I wanted to offer him the opportunity to change. After all, I had made successful shifts in my own life so I wanted to support him in making the changes he strived towards, and #3 I wanted it all: the marriage, kids, house and the white picket fence. And I thought for a time, that I could achieve those things with him. As the rolling stones like to say, “You can’t always get what you want.” Thank god.

I’ll spare you the details of the relationship. Instead, I’ll take you to my breaking point; or perhaps I should refer to it as my “breaking – open” point.

One day, after a fight in which cruel words were spoken, I took a walk near the waterfront. I was crying, exhausted, and had completely lost all perspective. I couldn’t make any decisions with clarity. My tears continued to flow for hours. Eventually when I was too weak to continue, I stopped to sit and meditated on a rock facing the water. I finally found some calm within myself. I could breathe. It was then that I had a conversation with my higher self and asked what to do. I said that I thought I still felt love for him. I said that I desperately wanted this to work but didn’t have any more energy or answers. I said that I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. I was at my breaking point. And I still remember this like it was yesterday… That little voice inside replied, saying

“You have a choice.”

My tears came to a to stop. And a quote came to mind that I’d always lived by. “You will be treated the way you allow others to treat you.” I put that philosophy into practice for many years. I had learned to demand nothing less, than to be treated with love and respect. I simply wouldn’t respond to anything else. And in that moment it became clear that it was time to stop giving him the benefit of the doubt. I remembered that I had options and one of those options was to leave.

“You have a choice.” I repeated the words out loud to test the freedom they carried, and let them resonate through me. I did have a choice. We always do. And I knew which one I had to make. I took a deep breath, walked home, ended the relationship and never looked back.

I chose me.

Recently I’ve been dealing with change; much of which is significant. The end of an old relationship, the beginning of new ones, my living situation, changing significant aspects of my career, etc…  Often in my past, I’ve become overwhelmed with this amount of change. The feeling of wanting “a safe place to stand” would arise. I would feel desperate to find that safe place where I could rest my head in order to calm my fears.

For some reason, although much uncertainty exists currently, I am finding that these said insecurities are not transforming into the paralyzing fear they once did. Somehow, instead, I am able to maintain a calm mind, allowing me to make new, proactive choices. This of course, is due to my ability to surrender to the nature of impermanence; something that even a year ago, I wasn’t nearly as skilled at doing.

There is essentially nothing that remains the same in life. The only thing we can always count on is change. And any time we “think” we have found stable ground, we find that sooner or later, the ground begins to fall beneath our feet. Our relationships are guaranteed to change or end, as do our jobs, and our physical bodies. So it makes sense, that

If change is the one constant in life, that we find a way to make peace with it.

Embrace it. Surrender. This of course, is easier said than done. I do my best to remind myself that it’s okay to feel whatever discomfort I’m feeling in these times. My meditation practice is imperative. The spaciousness that arises in this state, offers me calmness and clarity… and sometimes, that’s enough. I breathe in and breathe out.

In the end, I notice myself seeking a “safe place to stand” less and less. Knowing that all external security is fleeting, I prefer to seek peace by surrendering to the impermanence of things, rather than the so-called “solid ground”, which of course, it’s only solid for so long.

And once we no longer require the ground to create our false sense of security, it is then, that we begin to feel we can more effortlessly float through the challenges that arise in life…. And oh, how lovely a feeling that is.