I checked my bank account the other day and saw a charge for WordPress renewing this page. It occurred to me that this is an old friend I haven’t visited in a while. I didn’t feel bad about myself, or that I should have been doing more – I know why I haven’t been coming around, and I’m good with it. I’ve given myself a gift – I’ve given myself Time.
When I was in Kindergarten, a neighbor suggested to my mom that I join a tumbling class, like all the other kids. It was a benign enough suggestion – here’s an activity, her friends are doing it too, we can all carpool. My mom didn’t want me to miss out on the fun and agreed to sign me up too. When she told me of her intention, I looked at my mom and said “I just want to come home and play!” Kindergarten is hard y’all, and I had neither the interest nor the energy for one more scheduled thing. Let a sister relax. Besides, my toys were cool. And with that, mom did not sign me up for tumbling. I was given the gift of Time. Time to spend how I wished to spend it; Time to feel without having to function; Time to be exactly who I wished to be, exactly how I wished to be.
Time isn’t the same for everyone – each of us arrives at different points. That’s the beautiful thing about our journeys: they aren’t races, there isn’t one huge crowd at the finish line. We all get to arrive and share our experiences, what we have seen and done and felt along the way. And in sharing those, we get to start new journeys with friends and loved ones.
When I was in college, I saw so many people date people they liked, loved… maybe even eventually married. Not me. That wasn’t part of my journey. My timeline was different. When I fell in love with someone I was in my mid-20s, and it was wonderful. I knew it almost as soon as I saw her – not exactly when I saw her, because Love grows – but pretty darn quickly. By then, I was grateful for the Time I had given myself. It had been frustrating as all get out when I was waiting, but once I found that Love, I knew that my timeline was right on… and that I was being exactly who I wished to be, exactly as I wished to be. I had waited for someone who I truly loved, and she was worth the wait.
As I now grieve the loss of my marriage, I find that Time is once again a beautiful gift of Love. People say Time heals all wounds. That’s an incomplete statement if I’ve ever heard one. Time alone doesn’t do that. Time plus Honest Intention plus Active Tending To Your Soul – that heals. At least that is the formula that works for me. And when I say works, I mean “hurts like a mofo, and it’s better in the end.”
This is not an easy task. It means:
* If something hurts, don’t run from it – face it, feel it, and move through it.
* If something is uncomfortable or upsetting, look at it, figure out why it’s uncomfortable or upsetting, own what is yours to own and specifically don’t own what is not yours to own.
* If something is true but sucks, don’t run from that. Just because it sucks doesn’t make it any less true.
* If something is awesome but scary, don’t run from that either. Scary isn’t always bad, it could be your next big thing. Figure out if it’s scary good or scary bad.
I’ve been giving myself Time – Time to be exactly where I am; Time to feel exactly what I am feeling; Time to go exactly where I am going (wherever that is) and to get there exactly whenever I get there, on nobody else’s schedule but mine. In doing that, I’ve found that while I have lost my marriage I haven’t lost the Love we shared. I’ve found that I have opened up old and new parts of me, and that each day that passes I am profoundly grateful for my journey – my entire journey. I love the places I have been, I love the place I am in, and I am excited about the places I will go. I love that I get to enjoy where I am, and release the expectations that others had for me and that I had for myself. I love that I get to fully dive in to life, without having to deny any of my life experiences. In fact I’m embracing my life experiences.
Giving myself Time is the most natural thing in the world and, at times, can be the hardest thing to do, particularly when all I want to do is move quickly through the moment to not feel the hurt or the pain or the grief. But it’s the feeling it that heals it, and that brings me back to Love and that brings me back to Joy. And Love and Joy will always be my home.
Kat's Corner 