The last 3 years I have been wandering, lost, in an unknown place. I shook off the chains of my marriage, I left an abusive situation, and I gained my freedom. But in a lot of ways I wasn’t READY for the freedom I gained, and the sudden freedom really messed with my mind.

Where I was….

TheEx monitored me 24 hours a day. I was used to being watched and scrutinized and was fearful of talking to coworkers, fearful of phone calls and emails, and fearful of making plans. For years I knew that my husband would call me at work, randomly, and hope to catch me away from my desk, which he assumed meant that I was engaging in adulterous activities – so I did my very best to be at my desk at work 90% of the time (this was one of a number of undisclosed reasons that I was “let go” from that job without disciplinary action). I knew that every phone call I received at home was checked (or listened in on), that he checked my online diary, personal diary, daytimer, email accounts, snail mail, and cell phone records. My in-laws babysat and for years and reported on all my comings and goings (my FIL was just the same with my MIL). I lived in a cage where anything I did or said or anyone I talked to would result in insults and anger and more monitoring…

You’d think that being free after being so constrained would be a joyful thing. But I was not used to having freedom.

Living In FEAR…

For an entire year after I walked out I was on constant alert for danger.

After I left the ex, I didn’t leave my parents house for 6 weeks. I didn’t phone anyone. I didn’t go to any events. I lived with my parents, so my life was work and home, home and work. I was afraid to leave my parents’ house in case they were mad at me for not being there with them. After a while I would hide out in the city on the weekends after I dropped the kids off for his visitation – but I was afraid to go out with anyone or do anything where I could be seen.

I was so afraid of the freedom I had gained, I handed my life over to the next bad idea – the Stalker – even though I knew that I was not ready for another relationship. At first I was happy, I belonged to someone and I had boundaries given to me. There were expectations at first, then suggestions, then pleadings, and then commands. He would spiral through the cycle of abuse in one email, only to back track and blame his language on me and how much I meant to him in the next. When I pulled away, he desperately clutched, using all means including my spiritual beliefs to prove to me that he was the man I was destined for.

It took a great deal of strength, but I gained freedom from Stalker too…

Comfort in being ALONE…

By this time I was comfortable with being alone in my home. I was still afraid to leave my home after work or on weekends, and I didn’t regularly answer my phone or check my email… slowly slowly I could feel myself uncurl from the compressed constraints that I had lived within. Slowly I started to look up, to dream, to seek more, to explore.

I continued to be lost. I looked to friends to tell me what to do. I looked to Reg to tell me. I looked to coworkers. I looked to advice bloggers and relationship experts and my therapist and my children… I wanted to do it RIGHT this time, but I didn’t know what RIGHT was!!

I went from having my life mapped out for me (get a degree, get a husband, have children, get a job, buy a house, work 30 years, retire…) to having no map. I went from knowing what was expected of me to having no expectations for my future.

With an awed suddenness I went from having a life which was narrowly defined and constrained, to having every possibility opened to me…

And with it a terrible paralysis has developed.

Where I find myself NOW…

I have been spinning in circles looking at everything at once, wanting it ALL and knowing that inevitably it is impossible to do so. I am struck with the feeling of being both 36 and also 18 – I have responsibilities placed on me by society and yet I also have so many possible plans and desires that I don’t know what I “want to do when I grow up”…

Such was my previous life that I am not sure what my talents are, what my passions are, what I want out of life. I feel lost in a fog of “who am I” that occasionally lifts but doesn’t completely clear up. The path I am walking is unseen, unclear, and unsure… Several times I have lost my footing, turned or lost confidence in the steps ahead…

But this too is a natural part of life.

My formerly secure identity – X’s wife, BoyChild and GirlChild’s mother, employee of Y – have all been shaken or destroyed. I am standing in front of the mirror of my own consciousness, trying to see the future I no longer have, and trying to divine a path I have not yet committed to.

My grief is tangible to me, but invisible to most. I do not know who I am meant to be. I do not know HOW to find the answers. I do not know where to turn… other than inside myself.

Now is the time to trust in my heart and start to listen to my own intuition instead of deciding on the basis of what others judge to be the best path for me to take.  Now is the time for me to explore my self, my desires, and learn from my past mistakes. Now is the time to define, for myself, what is “success”, what is worthy of sacrifice and what burdens are best laid down…

I trust that I am the only one who can find my Path and my SELF. And right now that means exploring and discovering what fits ME and not listening to what fits someone else…

OOOh… what a great question!!

I have to note that I haven’t been spending a lot of time doing things I enjoy lately. It seems that whenever I have a free moment I have been getting things done – cleaning, cooking, preparing, organizing, rearranging, working – and so when I first read this I was all  like “ooh, fold the laundry and sweep the floors”…

While I can fully recognize that I need a certain level of tidiness and housework to be done in order to have a sense of all around well being, I also need to recognize that I should not allow the guilt of what isn’t done to keep me from doing things that make me feel ALIVE.  These 2 needs constantly pull me in opposite directions, and I need to make peace and make space for each of them in my life.

How I wish to spend some time… the PRACTICAL SIDE:

• I wish to spend some time every week going through my house for items of clutter, and releasing them into the “wild” – donating them to charity, selling them on Kijiji, throwing them away, or otherwise getting them out of my house and home space.
• I wish to spend some time every month going through recipes as well as my pantry and freezer, and making up “make ahead” meals for myself and my children so that we can stop relying on eating out so often.
• I wish to spend some time each week CLEANSING my space and making it into a reflection of ME.

How I wish to spend some time… the WHIMSICAL SIDE:

• I wish to spend some time with each of the colours of the rainbow… I want to get intimate with colours in all varieties – spreading them out in my art journal – and release the fear of being too bold or brash or other negative words.
• I wish to spend some time journaling every day, before my kids get up or after they go to bed.
• I wish to spend more time UNPLUGGED.
• I wish to spend some time submerged in an experience every month.

What do YOU wish to spend some time doing?

Long ago, around 20 years or so, I had a dream.

It wasn’t a glamorous dream.  It wasn’t a glittery dream. It wasn’t a blazing, take over the world dream. It wasn’t something that would get me lauded in halls of fame or infamy…

It was just a dream, a goal, a Path.

Somewhere on the Path I laid down my pack, sighed in resignation, and took another road. I took a road that was touted as “Better” and “Leading to Success” and “Stable”… I took the Path that made my family happy, “oh look, she’ll have a career, she’ll be able to look after her self!” and made my (now ex) husband happy, “oh thank God she will get a job that will PAY for the lifestyle I want without being an embarrassment to me”… and that made everything think I was a sensible, mature, adult…

I walked away from the Path that led to my dream – it was too “uncertain”, there was “no money in it”, it was too “new agey, woo woo”… and no one believed I could “make anything of” myself in that career.  

I would like to say I actually TRIED to make the new Path work, but my heart wasn’t in it. I tried my hardest to veer off the Path, to show those who had pooh-poohed my dream SEE that I wasn’t meant to be an office drone.  But I was good at school, and I made my way successfully through a program by finding the few things that were interesting enough to potentially work towards.

My heart wasn’t in it. Instead of planning a grand career that would take theEx and I to wonderful new heights of wealth (or debt the way he spent) I was planning a family and a simple, happy, impossible (since we had different ideas of this) life with children and a SMALL, modest home. While my husband wanted the grand dream home, 2 cars, all the toys and trinkets, I wanted FAMILY and love and a partner who would be part of my life.

I sabotaged my marriage. I got pregnant early on the new Path to my career and had to slow down  and then mere weeks before I was to finally graduate, at the beginning of a Gods-Honest CAREER path, I chose to have my daughter rather  than take the brass ring. With that choice to parent rather than follow the Path set for me, the death knell rang on my marriage.

Now… 3 years out of my marriage, 7 years out of school, 10 years out from the original divergence I am starting to wonder – what was so WRONG about the original DREAM that everyone steered me down the other Path?

Why can’t I find a way, even 10 years late, to follow a dream? Maybe my dream won’t make me wealthy… but its probably not destined to drive me to the poor house either.  Perhaps I won’t be wildly successful, but I might be at peace with MYSELF and who and what I am. Maybe I will disappoint those who love me… but maybe they will learn that they don’t always know what is best for me?

There is nothing really WRONG in becoming the person I want to be – even after a 10 year detour.

Once again it is Wednesday, and that means Wishcasting Wednesday. This week Jamie asks us to consider “Where do you wish to make a fresh start?”

When I first read it, I read it as “what would you like a fresh start for”… and part of me immediately jumped to “my adulthood”… dayum, a lot of the time I wish I had made the right decisions when I started off my adulthood (I’m assuming around 20) and if I had done that I wouldn’t feel “lost” the way I do right now.

But even I know that’s false…

(At least I HOPE HOPE HOPE that I am not the only person who feels lost…)

But where do I wish to make a fresh start: now that is something that directs ME to make a change.

I feel like this year has been all about changes – I have moved and tried to radically change a lot of things (mostly unsuccessfully) in my life – I have tried to change the way I spend, eat, entertain myself, interact with people, and view the world…  and yet I haven’t really been able to “get it”…

What I need is not a radical change by itself, but a fresh start! I need to say “okay, that was that, now lets start as if we’re starting from scratch”… I need to let go of the old systems and stories that are holding me back, and I need to MAKE A FRESH START.

Where do I need a fresh start?

1. Finances. I need to let go of the past mistakes and just move forward from HERE. I have found a few really useful resources and I am starting to evaluate and learn about money management.
2. Career. I need to look at my education not as a missed opportunity and a failure on my part (since I haven’t been successful in using my degrees) and start as if I am just starting out NOW with no baggage. What do I WANT to do, even if it is hard? And if I can find that I can determine the steps needed to get there.
3. Love.  Past patterns and past rituals need to go, and I need to start as if I was just starting out instead of as one who has been through and is afraid.

Where do you wish to make a fresh start?