A few days ago my husband dropped a huge bomb on me. He told me that he mostly wishes he were not in this relationship and often wonders what else he'd be doing if he weren't with me. It's one thing to say that and want to find out "why", and another to say it and then suggest that we separate, which is what he did.
Personal Hell can look like a rental house with Fresh White Sheets . I am now on vacation in Cape Cod with my husband’s family. I’ve been on this trip 18 times in 19 years.
My body has gone into a trauma response and it's been so bad I've often thought I can't make it through. It feels similar to the transition phase of labor, if anyone can relate. You’re surviving it somehow, but you really don’t think you can.
My husband and I have been through a lot, and it's true he's been quite miserable since I've known him (19 years!). However, I attributed this to his mindset and perspective on life (survival, must do what I have to do, life is hard, etc). Though we would connect quite easily in metaphysical conversation, and he's been there with me for every major download of spirit I've experienced (he was a key player in my download of light language in 2016), he hasn't cultivated a connection to self/God.
Since he's followed me through every major initiation of our relationship (catalyzed by my awakening process), I truly thought I was his North Star, leading him closer to a connection with Spirit. And perhaps that was true, because last Sunday he spontaneously performed metaphysical surgery (!) on himself while we sat in the parking lot of Goddard Park.
He asked me if I felt scared, several times. I didn't. I don't know how to describe how I felt. I wasn't scared because I've been through my own metaphysical experiences. I know lots of others who have too. But I should have been scared. Because that surgery was about to shatter an illusion that I'd clung to for 20 years of my life. An illusion that soothed a wound so deep within me, I can't determine its origin or much of anything about its nature. But when it gets triggered, I panic as though my life is being threatened. I lose control of my mind and my body starts to produce waves and waves of liquifying chemicals. I experience severe emotional pain and grief.
On some level I know that my husband is right. I've had moments of clarity, and we've even had them together, where I knew someday I'd have to leave him. But it was always "not yet, not yet". We clung to each other.
East Matunuk State Beach, 2021. Thinking my love was enough.
My greatest fear is that my husband will die. At the beginning of my yoga practice each morning I say five things to myself. One of those things is "This moment right here is all there is, it can't be any other way". This sentence points to the insanity of fighting against what is. I test my embodiment of this teaching by imagining someone telling me Jim is dead. It is my immediate "worst fear".
This fear could also be that my husband doesn't love me. That he no longer wants to protect me. That I am not his "other". That he is removing his love from my table. That I will not have access to his heart. That I am untethered.
I am 37 years old. I have a 16 year old son, and a 12 year old daughter. I am not a very young woman. There has never been a better time to mature myself in love. Yet, I don't know if I have the strength to do it. It is so painful to feel a separation from Jim, I feel like I need to go to the hospital. I've had to ask for mercy twice in 2 days. And when I’ve asked, it has been given. Suddenly my reality will change. The storm disappears, and it feels like it was never there. This gives me immediate relief from the pain, like an epidural. But it is also disorienting and unsettling, because I know I'm not facing my pain. I'm building up interest, to be paid at a later date.
Seeing you through the window. I’m shaken by how fast the separation is manifesting.
The love I feel for my husband, and that he feels for me, is such a sweet love. It is the kind you can make movies about. The way he touches my face and looks into my eyes, the way I slowly move my lips and my open hands all over his body, saying "I love you" with every breath, would be the envy of many yearning lovers. For many, this would be it.
But I know. I KNOW. There has always been a ceiling, and a floor, on our connection. I've been inviting him into me, to merge with me, since the beginning. Each time I've been denied. And I just thought it was too much, that maybe it was too scary. I thought maybe he didn't trust the feminine. And that we would get there. I thought maybe there was something wrong with me. I worked on myself. I turned my attention inward. I could fix this.
I matured. I took responsibility for a lot of my neediness and pain. But this pain was never quite healed, it was just removed from his plate. Tucked away inside of me, because I learned that trying to heal it through him would not work. But it CAN be healed through him, or through another. I know this. I know I need to be seen.
I have learned to enjoy life. I love my life. I love my family. I love my husband. For someone who used to constantly struggle with wanting to die, this is a huge accomplishment.
"Why do you stay?" He asked me. Because we both know, I am a bad fit. I don't belong in this place where people get drunk on the weekends and populate their decks with furniture from Target. I belong on a mountain some where in Peru, or in an Ashram, and or in the jungle.
Race Point Beach, Cape Cod MA. Real Time.
"Two reasons" I said. "One is that I don't know what to expect from life. I don't know where my dreams meet reality. And two is that, I didn't identify this relationship aS the pathway of my awakening."
There are so many more reasons. But these are the two that actually allowed my consciousness to settle where I was. None of the other reasons would pass the legitimacy test. I know I'm here on a mission, and that I must accomplish that mission above all else. This has been the source of my husband's pain so many times. He's had to decide if he wanted to come with me, or not. I was the one with a strong conviction. And now he's taken back his power and said "this is not me, I don't want to go with you".
And all of my conviction has been called to the mat. Do I really mean it? Can I get through this gate? Can I stay in integrity with my soul while the love of my life is torn away from me, leaving my deepest and most unhealed trauma untethered and exposed?
Truly, I don't know. My body shakes from the pain. I can't eat or sleep. And yet, I am aware that I am inflicting much of this pain on myself. These are my thoughts, my attachments, my projections that I torture myself with. My body is forced to endure the torment from years of this delusion.