Hemingway said, “write hard and clear about what hurts.”  I hate to be uber-artsy and abstract, but I think the journey of writing will lead to my knowing what hurts.  Because truthfully, I feel what hurts, but I can’t legitimately nail down what it is.  I kind of picked up some pain and just kept walking with it.  I didn’t address the pain when it came–and in all fairness life came undone rapidly.  And just as quickly, it brightened again.  But much like walking out of a dark room into direct sunlight, it can take a minute to adjust.  I’m adjusting.  I’m examining it.

You know how Oprah has “aha” moments?  I hate to be unoriginal and steal that, but I had about 100 aha moments this week.  I started reading Pema Chodron’s The Places That Scare You and I got 20 pages in the first two days.  Keep in mind, it’s under 200 pages; I figured I’d finish it in a couple of hours tops.  Nooooo.  I have to stop and think after every paragraph.  Sometimes, every sentence in the paragraph is a “whoa, let me read that seven times” kind of moment.  It has made me think more about that ball of pain I talked about in the last blog.  The one I feel like weighs me down; something so heavy that I carry around inside me each and every day.  It’s very inconvenient.  And, quite unnecessary.  

Wayne Dyer always said, “there are no justified resentments.”  Before Chodron’s book ever arrived, I went and found his book 10 Secrets for Success & Inner Peace days ago just to read that chapter again in full.  I was meditating a week or so ago, that statement came to mind and it has stuck there. I have been trying to find a way to put it into practice.  With Chodron’s book, I’m finally starting to put the pieces together.

Here’s the thing: I don’t hold the guy who broke my heart accountable for my pain.  Sure, it could have been different and I suffered every emotion imaginable that year.  But it’s been a year and half since I was in therapy one day and realized there was nothing he could ever say to make my vision of “how it was supposed to be” come to pass.  At that moment, I began to accept the reality of what happened and, more importantly, started living a tad bit more in the moment.  It was a small, but important change.  A couple of things happened, one a boundary was built.  Though we were no longer in contact with one another, something clicked and made me realize he was no longer welcome in my space.  Neither my physical space or mental space.  

A second–and far more freeing thing–is that I don’t hold someone else accountable, it’s MY pain.  I own it.  The hurt and disappointment I feel has slowly become mine.  I take responsibility for feeling this way.  I’m holding onto it.  It’s like a car title I put in my name. By taking it as my own, I have the power to change it.  Otherwise, I’m a victim and manipulated by the pain.  Feeling like it was a force I had to fight, I drank too much, made bad decisions, carried around resentment, etc until the point I felt bullied by it.  The day I said, “Oh, this is my pain and I have complete ownership of it” is the day that pain became half the size it was.  And now, after reading just 20 pages of Chodron’s book, it’s more clear than ever that I only carry it around because I choose to.  Hard as that is to admit–here I have been living as a victim for two years and fighting something imaginary–it’s also incredibly freeing.  

That heaviness only comes with me everywhere because I allow it.  If I let go of the resentment and just accept with love and much simplicity, “It didn’t work out” and live in today, I feel more alive than ever before.  My energy level increases.  The attention and love for everyone and everything increases.  But having loved someone and not being loved in return is only a piece of a much larger picture. If I am honest, it’s a combination of a lot of things changing very quickly.  And I think I’m going to have to pick them apart, one by one.  Like removing layers and layers of peeling paint on a wall, I’m going to have get down to the surface and see what’s really there.

Now, where do I start?….Maybe I just did.