Why Was I so Willing to Discard Myself?

Did I discard myself? Did I set my true being on a shelf for safekeeping hoping to return to her when the terrain was safe or when the tragedy of my husbands addiction no longer loomed like a brooding storm shadowing our life? If that was a choice, made consciously with care and deliberation, why is that moment not vivid in my mind? The gravity of it should have called for a plaque to be hung on the wall of my heart, a place I could return to honor the moment I chose to no longer be whole. A place I could celebrate the sacrifice I knowingly and intensionally made.

You see I gave him a gift. I gave him me. Gave him my strength when he could not find his own. Gave him my life energy so that what was left of his could fight the disease. I gave him each ounce of the love I possessed.

Had I erected an alter honoring my decision, I could have looked to it for markers of when my shelved self began and therefore, when I might return to myself. I could have offered up the crystals and herbs and healing plants the hunger of my empty self cried out for as the steady drip of my life blood left my body.

If I had erected that alter, I would also have known that one day there would be an end. But there is no such moment burned into my memory. No monument exists documenting the minute I gave myself away. Instead, I leached out imperceptibly until eventually I woke one day not recognizing the apparition holding space for what had been me.

Or maybe, it would be more accurate to say, I could no longer see the woman I thought I was. The woman that existed in my mind from years past when she had been vibrant and whole. She was the ghost I had carried in the pocket of my mind for over two decades like a talisman thinking she was protecting me from evil. Someone I assumed I could pull out and rehydrate on demand.

But if that woman had existed, she was now long gone and I have no selenite rod warding off the dark thoughts. There is no rose quartz tinting my view deflecting the reality of the empty being I now observe in the mirror.

But I can face her emptiness now. Can see the loose outline of what she might be again. Can feel strength return slow and steady displacing the fumes of loss with each passing day.

One way or another, I will be whole again. Although I can’t yet see the map or the end point, I’ve stepped forward into that journey. I no longer hesitate, one foot in, one foot out, questioning whether I have the courage. My emptiness can no longer hide behind the outer veneer that shielded it, not even from me. So, step forward I will, because the promise of what is to come is more luxurious than the memories that held me in place.