It is the day when we stop and look at where we’ve been for the last twelve months and adjust our compass for where we’re going in the next twelve. You can’t move forward until you stop and look at where you’ve been. That was the biggest lesson I learned this year because it was the thing I neglected to do last year on this day.
On this day last year I had spent the previous six months since my mom passed away, just pushing forward and pushing all thoughts of where I had been with her out of my life. Then December 31 became the darkest day in my entire life. I was at a wonderful party with people I loved. Someone said the wrong thing at precisely the right time and it was like a hammer cracking a glass globe inside of me. I honestly didn’t know what was happening to me. I completely dissolved and felt like I was outside of myself – just looking at myself in a big heap on the floor. The next day, now looking back at how I was acting, I realize I was in shock. My insides were folded away. Closed off from even myself. I was talking and moving and making motions, but I felt far away from me. It’s the mind’s natural protection against trauma. I had no idea that I had a complete breakdown. I just thought I drank too much – all three glasses of wine I had. I never knew I was holding and repressing the sadness and pain of losing my mother crammed so tightly inside of what I can only describe as a glass ball deep in the pit of my stomach. I remember going away from the party and lying in a heap crying and shaking so hard and just wanting my mom back there beside me to talk to. I guess you can’t dismiss the loss of a woman that you talked to everyday for 58 years with wave of the hand and an “Oh this didn’t bother me.” Even today it still amazes me that that was what happened to me one year ago tonight. That began a journey that I will never, ever forget.
But the journey is done. There are 364 entries in this blog that tell the ups and downs of this story. In the process I hurt people very close and important to me. I regret they were the catalyst to my breakdown, but they were not the cause of it. I spent many months agonizing over what a bad person I was to do this to them. That created another dimension to the journey. In addition to finally being forced to face losing my mom, I now had to wrangle with my own self-worth. Hurting others is foreign to my nature and to see the damage I had done just clawed out the last pieces of heart that were left within me. This involved spending the first three months of 2011 in a severe depression, that again, I had no idea was happening until my husband suggested getting some help. That woke me up. Along about the end of last March I got up out of the chair I had spent those three months in and took the first step toward where I am today.
It was the longest walk of my life. Step by step. One foot in front of the other. Day by day. Thank goodness one relationship was repaired and that friend became my rock, along with my husband, on this journey. Slowly as the months went on, God added other people into the mix that helped me on my way, but it was my faith in God that ironically I’d entered into on the 31st day of July 1971 that pulled me through this.
This was still yet another dimension I had to grapple with. Over the years I had strayed from the intimacy I had shared with God. This was definitely His way of getting my attention and telling me serious spiritual work needs to be done. Thus began the tearing down of who I was and the building up of an entirely new person. And here I am. Ready for a new year. Ready to live my life in a new direction – this time decided by God and what He wants to accomplish with me in 2012. I no longer control or try to manipulate any part of my life. I no longer ask “Why me?”. I just nod in prayer, accept what I’m given, give gratitude that I made it through without losing myself, and move on.
It has taken every single solitary day of this year to get to this point where I can talk so honestly about what happened. It is very freeing to do it. Only by looking back am I free to move forward. After taking this hard look at where I’ve been, I will begin adjusting my compass for where I’m going.
And so, as another year slips by, the sun sets on 2011, and….I have written.
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