It’s been a while since I posted anything on this blog, but tonight I felt like exploring some things that have been living in my mind, I hope you don’t mind as I ramble for a bit.
So, somewhere along the way in my journey I lost myself. My sole purpose in life was to exist. Basically, I would wake up, work, be a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend, sleep and repeat. I became mentally beat at some point but I didn’t recognize it, I just kept going through the motions of it all.
I gained small joys in little moments of peace or moments with my daughter. She could always make me smile, but at one point, the smiling became automatic as well. When I could no longer find joy within myself I held on tight to my job of being a mother. I wanted to make sure my daughter knew her mom was ok and that I would always be there for her. I realize now how wrong I was to hide my true feelings. My smile stopped reaching my eyes, they used to sparkle with happiness and mischief, but looking through old photos the life behind the eyes had dulled. I didn’t notice. She saw right through me, she saw that I wasn’t truly happy, I know this now because she told me.She can see the difference in me now.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I didn’t have moments of true happiness, I did, but I couldn’t keep it going. At one point, I blamed others for the lack of happiness I felt inside, that was unfair of me to do. I came to realize that true happiness comes from within, from loving me, loving life and everything that I am doing. When I realized that, I started to make changes. I started focusing more on me, I began reading again, writing, took up yoga classes, started a meditation practice and my favorite, acupuncture. I focused on ways to make myself feel better emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. I tried a few different things, but I would always end up with an empty feeling inside. I began to question myself, ‘ What was wrong with me?” ” Why couldn’t I be happy?” I reached out to my therapist and began exploring those feelings, not directly of course because at that time, I was still pretty closed off to sharing and feeling emotions. I was afraid of what others would think, I felt I was broken and didn’t think others would get it. I didn’t want to let myself feel the pain, which I needed to do in order to feel the good.
I began pouring positivity into myself, began to love me, part of my struggle was that I didn’t love myself because of a trauma history. I felt unclean, unworthy of being happy. I felt like I shouldn’t be happy. So many negative things went through my mind at all hours of the day and night, I couldn’t stop the negative self-talk. I didn’t know how to give myself compassion. I knew that what happened to me was not my fault but deep down I felt it was. If I had just said “No”, if I had said something, etc etc. I worked through some of this with my therapist, and during a session it finally clicked. I was avoiding feelings because I didn’t want to feel like that shattered person, I wanted to hide that part of me, but one day that section in my mind opened, tears flowed and that is when I began to heal.
As I began to heal on the inside, the life I was living started to weigh on me more, I felt like an impostor and I didn’t know how to break free from the vicious cycle of it all. So, I did what I normally would do, I avoided that and dove into my writing. I was still focusing on me but I was avoiding the biggest decision I needed to make. One night while I was looking for more information about writing I revisited Twitter. I began to see a new world, this was a space I could be my authentic self and I felt safe being me around strangers who would never meet me in real life, strangers that didn’t know my history. I could share my pain, my scars by writing my own poetry.
When I began using my voice via written word, I discovered a part of me that I had missed and on one of those long nights on twitter I met a group of writers that I will forever hold dear to my heart. It was the longest night of chatting back and forth on a thread, one we finally had to take to a private chat because we were getting lost in the responses. What always gets me is that night I couldn’t sleep so I logged onto twitter and the timing was just right for all of us to ” meet”. If you have ever been on Twitter you know how fast paced it is, so to have caught part of a conversation and kept up with it was a damn miracle or possibly the universe doing its thing. We were all meant to connect. . I love each one of them dearly, each similar yet different in their own ways and it works. The most supportive bunch of people I’ve encountered in social media world and we have not even met in real life yet, its in the plans.
I lost much sleep talking to this group of people, ” The Chaos Crew” as we call ourselves now, after we went through a few name changes, this one fits us much better. We tend to cause chaos on threads. By the universe and her mysterious ways I connected with someone from “The Chaos Crew” on another level. On a much deeper level than expected that was for sure. Talking to him was easy, granted it was via private messages on Twitter at first. I’m still trying to figure this part all out, but I keep coming back to the fact that I was able to divulge such heart-wrenching memories with him with ease. I was then able to use my voice in my real life, not just social media. I felt like the puzzle piece I was missing finally clicked into place. A sense of ” this is right” came over me and I continued to explore. I continued to be authentically me, then… I fell in love. It hit me out of nowhere, the feeling of love. I was terrified of what I felt for someone I hadn’t even met in a real life setting. I told myself I was just romanticizing the situation, because I am a romance writer after all, but the more I explored my feelings, I knew it was real.
I was in trouble, I didn’t know what I was going to do now with the feelings that were swirling in my soul, because that is where I felt them, deep within myself. Like I said, I felt complete and it scared the shit out of me, but I just went with the flow and let myself feel. My friends and even my daughter noticed a change come over me. I would smile everyday and it was genuine, I have pictures to prove it. I went through a lot of changes in a short time but the ease I felt with the biggest decisions in my life (divorce, selling my home, living on my own) let me know that this was all part of my journey. It was as if I was building to this moment of meeting these people, and this man. I’m still working out some of the thoughts in my mind about all of it but for the first time in 18 years, I feel whole. The feeling is insane but the happiness I feel is genuine. I feel like myself again, I feel like the person I was becoming before my life took a turn into the darkness. I see light, I see the beauty in things big and small, I enjoy gazing at the stars again and just being. I enjoy my daughter completely and she sees the change in me, she tells me all the time which brings me greater joy.. I want to hold onto this feeling, now that I’m able to feel different emotions at once, when before I didn’t let myself feel any.
I will continue working on myself because it is part of the journey, every day new experiences and new challenges present themselves and I will get through each of them one day at a time.
— Jae Vel
Thru Black-Framed Glasses 