Until

Don’t cry,

My Ex Lover's Flowers: Yellow Rose ©Sarah Marie Lacy. 16x20 acrylic on canvas, $900.00

Little One.
He can’t get to us now.
He can’t catch us in here.
We are invisible,
Hidden,
Gone.
And as long as we don’t make a sound,
We are safe.
For now.
Later on, who knows
What frosty breath
He may blow upon us
What gentle dangers
He may caress across our cheek.
But for now,
We are silent.
Tranquil.
Safe.
Until…

I hid myself away for a very long time.

I built myself a box, a concrete house to live in. It was my protection, my armor. I hurt for such a very long time.

For months after the depression, the choices and the relationship were over, the fear and the pain stayed with me. The pain sat in my chest and throat, day after day, choking me. The fear twisted my stomach into endless, painful, unfathomable knots. I barely ate. My weight plummeted.

The nightmare was over, but the pain, the vulnerability remained. I was so fragile, so delicate. I’d have blown away in a strong wind.

I walked for miles during that time. I would literally disappear for hours and walk everywhere, trying to make sense of the hurt, attempting to come to terms with all of the pain inside of me.

I was so afraid – afraid of being alone. Afraid that I was unlovable. Afraid that  I was broken forever.

We went to England that summer, my family and I, and I requested being allowed to stay with an aunt for a week by myself. She worked all day and my cousin was staying with his dad, so I had the house to myself.

For four days, I ate like a starved dog and wrote, and wrote and wrote. I churned out pages and pages of journal entries. Sometimes I would just vegetate on the couch and watch bad British TV, but mostly I wrote and tried to make sense of the mess in my heart and my mind.

I learned one thing that summer

Or maybe you could call it a decision, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s both.

I decided that I would be the only person responsible for me and my happiness, that never again would I need any other person to make me whole and that if I had to spend my life alone because I was unlovable, then so be it.

I would love myself instead.

But sometimes decisions like that need renewing

Going back and talking about the past has been cathartic. It’s allowed me to let go of some of the past that I’d been holding onto for a very long time. There’s some space inside myself now that there wasn’t before.

But I also learned something about myself – I’m not listening to me anymore. I may have made the decision to love myself, but I’ve been neglecting myself lately. Perhaps even as long as a year, or more. I stopped listening to me properly. I wasn’t creating my life from the inside out, I was creating from the outside in, running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to “do” all the right things to make myself happy.

Unfortunately, I ignored the one thing that would make me happy – paying attention to me.

Flipping my life upside down

Drastic times call for drastic measures. I can’t continue on as I am because I’m making myself miserable. But I’ve made a choice today, and you all can be my witnesses.

This is not a temporary choice – this is not a decision to do things differently for a month, or a week. This is like the choice to become sober, or quit smoking.

I’m going to stop trying to control the outside, and I’m going to start taking care of the inside.

Someone said to me yesterday that the emotional lesson of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is learning to take care of yourself. Well I’ve been sick for 8 years, and while I’m further down that road than I was before, I am mostly definitely still a novice.

Something inside of me snapped today. I think I finally started paying attention to the signs. Both books I randomly chose from the library last week speak about creating your life from the inside out – Deepak Chopra’s “Book of Secrets” and Jen Louden’s “The Comfort Queen’s Guide to Life”. I’m slowly learning to pay attention to the signs before the Universe actually starts throwing shit at me (trust me on that one).

Today, I realized that I couldn’t continue on as I have in the past. Something needs to change, or I’m going to keep running in miserable little circles for the rest of my life. I’ve decided that the Universe can take care of the outside stuff – it’s been managing itself for several millennia, I don’t see why it would stop now. It doesn’t need me to watch over every little thing to make sure it goes smoothly. I’m going to let go of all that outside stuff, and really start taking care of my inside stuff.

Today, on the 9th day of April, 2009, I, Sarah Marie Lacy, am going to start living life from the inside out.

Wish me luck.