There are times in my life where I find myself asking, whose life is this anyways? Where I look around and I find that everything seems so unfamiliar. In these moments of profound clarity I have to ask, how did I get here?
Being lost is very unsettling. It evokes a myriad of emotions in me that are to say the least uncomfortable and at most times rather frightening. Living with these emotions though is not that uncommon for me. The fact of the matter is we are actually very old friends. I have to say too that I have learned a lot coexisting with my old friends. It has given me the opportunity to feel into them in an integral way giving them the ability to tell their stories. And as a result I have come to know them and own them. More importantly though they have shown me why I have become a lost soul and how. Becoming lost wasn't a conscious decision on my part. It just happened. It's not uncommon to lost oneself as a result of horrific abuse. In fact it is quite common. I became lost out of necessity. As a way to protect myself. As a way to stay sane. in the face of insanity. I still have days though where I am stunned to my core at the shear magnitude of my experiences. Where I ask myself, did that actually happen to me? Is it actually possible that people are that cruel that they would perpetrate such acts on innocent children? On unwilling adults? But then I pull back because I realize that to logically dwell on such patently illogical experiences is a futile act, that I would be better served if I put my focus on recovering from my experiences and not on the experiences themselves.
Finding myself in this place also begs the question, can I make a life for myself in this unfamiliar territory and can I find happiness? Is it possible to attain happiness? Happiness is such a subjective experience for most. If I were to ask 7 different people what is their definition of happiness is I could guarantee that I would get 7 different answers. And none of them would be wrong.
Looking back I have been happy. There was a time in 2008 when my precious baby girl was still alive that I was happy. When her and her brother where still together playfully doing what cats do. Where I was able to bear witness to their unconditional love for each other and for me. I loved that brief time of my life. It seemed like I had it all. I had finally found my grounding even though I was dealing with the ongoing issues of memory recovery and all that it entails. Still, I had begun to heal, to be vulnerable, and to be open again. But that short time was what it was. I still wish I could get back again though. To somehow recapture that time, those feelings, those moments of real joy. But I can't. And the knowledge of that is something I have to live with.
Getting back is not always an exercise in futility though. I hope to get back my true self as I continue my work in recovery. I also hope to finally break open that cocoon that my true self was put into for safekeeping during my insane childhood. And with it I hope to get back my sense of place so that the territory I inhabit will actually become my own.
