lost in the Dark

"There is perhaps a moment in every life that something dark comes along. If we are not careful to recognize its life-damaging potential before it grips us, it can hold us for the rest of our lives. We can become addicted to that wound and use it forever as an identity card. We can turn that wound into sorrow and forsaken-ness, a prison of crippled identity." (John O'Donohue)

There is a tension presented here. On the one hand one has to fully feel and truly experience what happens when the darkness comes along, in order to heal. On the other hand we can linger in the dark without striking a match, without searching for a way out, without doing what we can to gain traction and heal.

And this is my daily battle. I struggle to do anything, everything to help myself out and heal and yet I know I must do the work. I've just never quite gotten the right tension with how much you do and how much you allow to happen and trust the path. In times past, when I've been in rhythm in life, my path seemed to find me of its own accord. I merely allowed it to happen.

But in this healing, I feel as though I'm spinning my wheels, going nowhere. I've made decisions in the face of the advising and my own gut speaking regarding said big choices. And somehow, even still, traction in healing and moving out of the dark seems to evade me.

I made the difficult choice to move away from my ex and my kids. And the colleague I had come to rely on as something akin to family and friend betrayed me a few weeks shy of my moving. In the face of my trusted advisers recommending I move all the same, I followed through with the trajectory. I left everything and everyone I've known for nigh on ten years. I hit the control, alt, delete button and started over.

And once again I stare at the bleak landscape of my life.

I know this nothingness is opportunity to reinvent myself, reinvent my life. The blank slate. I keep telling myself to conjure creativity and imagination. I keep kindling hope that some day things will be better. I keep putting one foot in front of the other in spite of my own impulse to just quit. Not, today, anyway. Tomorrow. You can always quit tomorrow. But I worry my identity has become crippled by the narcissist's wounding. I worry somehow I have lost my own story. I don't want him to be my story. I want to sing a song to the soul that can survive all even when it feels lost, wandering in the endless darkness and hope it finds its way.

But, instead, I just continue to feel lost.

When and And

I abhor the existence in this world of contradictions. I just wish someone, could get it.
But that is far too much to ask, I'm pretty damn sure.

When you move out of state because somehow you can't move on in your life otherwise.
And yet, in your new locale you feel paralyzed because you're stuck in the old place you always longed to escape because little people are there.

When you leave because you don't feel safe--your dreams of someone strangling you in your sleep, keep you from sleeping.
And yet, everyone asks you why and how you think your kids might be safe there. And you really don't feel like explaining for the umpteenth time how image is everything to him and because of this you are banking on him not harming them.

When you feel nothing but judgment in making the horrific decision to leave, to abandon your own children in another state, with him, when that was the one thing you swore he'd never beat out of you. You'd die first.
And guilt eats you for dinner every night when you go on living, even though it feels like the only choice you could have made, but all the same you think daily of dying.

When you're pretty sure they think you to be the Narcissist.
And you're just so exhausted from all the years of dealing that you don't have the energy to argue or fight back and so you just accept it and hope some people eventually see the truth that is too exhausting to fight for.