Shattering Me

Today I want to discuss the point in which I hit the bottom in my life. Of course at various points in my life I’ve gotten close to the bottom, but during a series of events over the last three years one event sticks out in my mind the most as my bottom. It started with a single choice that I made based on so many factors and events before it. Just a little over three years ago I was with a different partner than I am currently and I was married to him and we share a son together. At the beginning of 2015 he lost his job and it was at that point that the façade of my life started breaking apart. Of course I use the word façade because that’s what it was something that looked beautiful on the surface, but was ugly to the core. Him and I started out together at the ages of 15 and 16 and at the time I had very little understanding of what it meant to love another much less myself.

When I look back on it now as an adult from a different place I understand that this relationship carried on as long as it did because it gave me a place to hide. What I was hiding from was myself and my ability to deeply and completely love myself or anyone else. Our relationship with each other lasted almost 25 years and during that time I got very good at hiding from and lying to myself. My childhood had taught me very well that if you let yourself love someone to the fullest extent then you will be crushed by them. By the time I started this relationship this lesson had already been ingrained in me. I now understand and accept that part of the reason I stayed in this relationship was because I knew that I would never love him in a truly deep and penetrating way. It’s my belief that I stayed with him to avoid real suffering, which is what I perceived love to be, which was my unconscious minds reasoning in the past.

Just about two years ago I started an “affair” with a younger man about a year after my then husband lost his job. At the time I called it something else, but I’m not going to call it that now, because it would do an injustice to the people who practice that form of relationship. It is very important for me to explain exactly why I started it so the position of my mental and emotional state at the time is more comprehendible. During that time myself and my then husband were both dealing with some pretty significant mental illness problems due to grief being caused by the eventual loss of our home and the life that we had tried to build. Then in 2015 we got ourselves involved with a spiritual group and started going to their events. It was at this place where I met the younger man that I’m with now. Before I met him it was mine and my then husbands intention to let go of saving our home form foreclosure and instead choose to move to this community and live there.

Once I started to participate in this community I noticed that they had some severe behavioral issues amongst its members that were not being dealt with by the community or its leadership. It was over one particular week that I stayed when the actions of the people around me depressed me so much that I finalize my decision to commit suicide. Now, I have dealt with varying degrees of depression and anxiety and suicidal tendencies since childhood but, this one particular time was different than the other times, because I found that I was extremely calm about my choice and why I was going to do it. My decision to die was based the idea of my then husband and son gaining access to my life insurance money, so they could save our home from foreclosure and keep living there. At that time the idea of my family becoming homeless was an unbearable idea to me especially considering the fact that I myself have been homeless and knew the first hand the horror of it.

While I was still at this place on Thursday I had decided in my mind that when I went home the next week I was going to end my life. Ending my life for this reason was something that I had contemplated a week before and I had even done the research into my life insurance and it’s policies on the subject. By Friday I started making some final decisions and by that night I had made some interesting choices to say the least. My affair started with this younger man because frankly I wanted to spend at least one night in my life with somebody that I really wanted and who really wanted me before the end. Interestingly enough I justified my actions by looking at it like being a prisoner on death row and being allowed one last indulgence before their execution. To be totally honest I must admit that I did this action with very little thought or concern to its consequences mostly due to the fact that I believed I wasn’t going to live long enough to see those consequences. In that moment of choice I did something I had never done before, which was I thought only of myself and absolutely no one else.

Of course the next day my actions rang through the halls of the gossip circles in that community and by the end of the weekend everyone had made their judgments on me without even knowing “why” I chose to do what I did. Honestly in my entire almost 40 years at that point I had never indulged once in any casual interaction of that nature with anyone. I had literally only interacted with two other people in my entire life up to that point. I guess you could say that it’s not exactly like I had a track record or history of this type of behavior before this occurrence. I got through the weekend by telling myself that the real reality of my choice would not matter to these people, because I believed they were going to judge and condemn me as a bad person regardless of whether I explained myself or not. I have now accepted the responsibility for the fact that it was my fault that they didn’t know why, because I never chose to trust anyone in order to be able to tell anyone else besides my partner, that is until now.

Interestingly enough on the last day I was there I asked someone to do healing work on me, because I didn’t want to go to my end with the intense pain from my back and other illnesses I was constantly dealing with in those days. When this person did this healing they told me that their guide said I was in immediate danger and I just laughed cynically on the inside knowing what I was planning on doing. The person did their healing work and drew a protective symbol on me. Now when I went home I finished up all my projects and I cleaned my home and I wrote everyone letters including the young man that I had spent one night with. Then by Wednesday afternoon I decided to sit down in my bathtub with a robe on and with a couple of knives and put an end to my life. Then something miraculous occurred when I tried to kill myself neither one of the knives would cut me no matter how hard I stabbed it would not break the skin. During this attempt my then husband showed up and tried to stop me and I only laughed cynically at him saying, “They won’t let me die!” It was then that I realized after laughing extensively that the protective symbol the person had put on me had protected me from myself.

Since then I have never attempted suicide again although I will admit the events over the last three years definitely made me contemplate it consistently. I now realize that my life’s events and my own poor choices over the course of my life had brought me to a point where it had become absolutely necessary for me to shatter my entire life and rebuild it and that’s what I did. My choice to shatter my life was partly conscious and unconsciously born and it has taken me a long time to accept the concept that my existence was worth the price that I and others paid for me to learn these lessons. The person I’m with now knows my reasoning behind that suicide attempt and behind why we started the way we did and he accepts and loves me regardless. Even though our relationship didn’t start in the most conventional of ways it has been one of the most powerful and penetrating relationships that I have ever had. My love for him is the type of love that I had ran from for most of my life due to fear of loss and rejection. Currently I understand the way that I love myself and him is the way that love should truly be, which is deeply, completely and without fear.

My relationship with my then husband and how long it went on for is something that I wish I could’ve ended sooner, but the way that relationship ended showed me just how stubborn I can be to learn life’s lessons. I’m not proud of the fact that it took me as long as it did to learn it or that I needed to be taught in such a harsh way, but I do not regret any of it. To regret it or to want to change one single thing might change where I’m at now and I am happy with where I’m at and who I’ve become. My relationship with my then husband obviously ended in divorce and he is now with someone else. Currently we share the custody of our son and I believe that our son understands that we are happier being apart.

There are some people that may think I should be ashamed of my actions and their effects on others and myself. While I can feel compassion for the pain others suffered I am not ashamed, after all shame is just another machination of the ego to keep us hiding from the truth. Once I got my ego under control and stop playing hide and seek games with myself I came to understand the deeper truth of those events. What I have come to understand not just about those events, but about all the events in my life is that they were actually “lessons” that I had to learn from and can now share with others. The reality is that these events needed to happen to mold me for a very specific set of purposes and I am now living those purposes every single day.

One main purpose are my writings and their ability to draw a map for others to help guide them out of the most dangerous points of depression namely suicidal tendencies. My stories are here to remind us all that we are not alone even in the darkest hallways of our hearts and minds. That if we truly want help it is out there to be found within ourselves and around ourselves. We are all going to make mistakes as we call them, but what we should really ask ourselves is, “Is there really such a thing as a mistake?” These lessons are not mistakes because they are showing me that there is a divine pattern that was hidden in what I perceived to be the chaos of my life. It is this divine meaning and purpose that will take time for all of us to open and interpret and that we will all go about understanding it differently.

I am no longer so close to my life and past traumas that I can’t see it anymore. Over the last three years of deconstructing and reconstructing myself and my life my vision has gotten more accurate. Now that I have stepped away from the canvas of my life I can finally see that all of the events that occurred are connected rather than disconnected. It is in this connection that I see the “divine” at work teaching me and helping me to become who I am in this moment and who I will be in the future. My prayer for those struggling inside their deepest darkest places within is that they may realize they are not alone and that the divine’s energies are always with them and that they always will be.

Until next time… Namaste!

The picture included is from the video “Shatter Me” and if you haven’t seen it I recommend watching it. It is listed on my Facebook page and it is a wonderful video for anyone going through a major transformational period. This video inspired me to write this article for everyone and myself. I also wrote a bit of an angry poem called “Not Sorry” that expresses some of my feelings about this whole event. If you want to read it look under my “photo” area under the “albums” tab then select the “My Poetry” album then select “list view” to find it and my other works.