Just as I was coming out of the depression of the past week, and starting to feel better, wouldn’t you know it heartache bitch slapped me again. I found out on Christmas day that my ex had remarried back in the spring of this year. I was shocked at how hard it hit me. My head started to spin, my heart started to race, and the tears did come. I had to take sleeping pills that night just to be able to slow the internal crazy down.
I awoke the next morning with the feeling like my life just became unraveled again. When was this shit going to stop? As luck would have it, a dear friend of mine was coming over for a girlfriend’s day of coffee and catch-up. We have both been uber busy the past few months and had planned for some time to chill and reconnect. Of course when she got here, I sobbed and told her the news.
She promptly said OK, let’s sit down and unpack that bag of hurt and see what is in there; God bless her. First she said, you know for sure he is not coming back now, he has remarried. That hit me like a shot through the heart. Then she reminded me, that he was a “proxy” for my mother, so that this was not really about him, but about that unhealed relationship with her.
And there was the source of the pain. I had long since given up on ever having a loving connection to my mother. That ship has sailed, as we cannot go back and relive those years. In marrying Mike, I married my monster – my mother. As I have said before, when I met him, he felt like home to my heart- only I had forgotten that home was a dysfunctional shit show and not a place to go back to. But I leapt in head first and spent the seven years we were together feeling on a gut level that he didn’t love me – just like my mother – and trying to get him to love me – just as I had done with my mother.
I was not successful in either of those relationships, but here’s the truth – even if I had gotten Mike to love me, it still would not have healed the original wound – the source of this pain – the source of the meltdown over his re-marriage – my unhealed relationship with my mother.
And there is where I am. In order to release all of this hurt, I have to sit with the pain of knowing that my mother will never love me no matter what I do, and I have to be OK with that. Repeat again Robin …..She will never love me, and I’m OK with that. Keep repeating until it sets in.
I used to think that after I went back and rescued my “inner child” from those years of physical and mental abuse, that I wouldn’t have to go back there anymore. I realize now, it’s not a single rescue trip, as I didn’t get stuck all in one piece. Each blow shattered off a part of me and got stuck in all sorts of places.I am learning now, that I have to go back and find the “stuck” or lost pieces to make me whole again.I am not afraid of putting together all the cracked pieces, as done right, that is where beauty can be found; it’s just painful going back to that place, but i know, even more painful to leave those pieces stuck there and festering.
So as this shitty year comes to an end, I am journeying back to the place that broke me to find another piece of me.