Then there are the bad days…

It’s nearly 10 pm on this hellaciously humid Texas night and I’m sitting out on the porch writing this as I listen to the wildlife and bugs going nuts. I have had a low-grade fever all day, so I’m doing what any rational sick person would do; I’m writing a blog post and sipping on a pint of Yellow Rose!

Why am I doing this? For the simple sake of transparency, while this blog is meant to be uplifting, it’s also meant to be real, and you can’t very well have real healing without working through the real hurt, or just real day-to-day shit. Being honest with myself and my audience is a crucial part of that.

Thursday night I attended a workshop about desire, I was excited to go and hear the speakers and support someone I care about.  What I wasn’t expecting was for my old self-sabotaging self to hitch a ride and be my date for the night.  I thought I had arrived alone, but it became quite apparent as I stepped into the room filled with pairs of ladies mingling, of which I knew none, save for one of the speakers and another that was providing the food, that little Miss SpellCheck (my inner self-defeating monologue) had come along for the ride.

I could tell the majority of the ladies knew each other or had brought friends along, and immediately that voice in my head started screaming. “WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE, WE DON’T BELONG HERE, THEY’RE ALL GONNA LAUGH AT YOU, YOU’RE JUST GOING TO EMBARRASS YOURSELF!!!” (Yes, those words exactly, and I see the humour as most of you know me as Kari)

But, I did what I do when I feel completely awkward and I struck up a few conversations before the event kicked off and tried to feel more comfortable in my own skin. The speakers began and were incredible, but then I kept getting in my head. When I feel moved by something or agree, I find myself unintentionally making little noises, you know like…Mmhmm or just MMMM’s, either way, I was strangely aware that I kept doing it, my mother does the same thing and I remember being annoyed by it in my teenage years, and here I was doing the same thing! So, cue voice in my head “Oh my God, will you stop?! I can’t take you anywhere, I knew you would embarrass us!”

That went on for a bit, as I tried to shut her up and pay attention, which I was, it was just a dual monologue. I ended up speaking about something, though if I’m honest I can’t remember what it was that I had said because the whole time I just had SpellCheck screaming “What are you doing?! Shut-up, shut-up, shut-up!”, but this is where it got really bad friends.

There was this group of women and one other lone woman that I had been noticing (outside of my head) for a while. The lone woman had asked a question early on, seemed uninterested in the answer and then just sat on her phone the rest of the time, before screaming injustice and storming out. I could feel something was off but ignored it before that took place. After I had shared my little story, a woman from the group asked a question a bit later to one of the speakers and was obviously aggressive and looking for an exchange of words. So what do I do?! I pipe in and try to deflect from the speakers and defuse a situation that I can tell is an obvious set-up, but then I couldn’t shut up!

I don’t know if I was annoyed at myself, or by the fact that these women were not there to support other women but to rather make some stand against who-the-hell-knows-what (shills), but I just couldn’t shut-up. I had made an awkward and weird situation even worse and in the process completely derailed the presentation. Thankfully, one of the speakers (and my life coach) was there with a life raft and got it back on track. The presentation concluded and we all went back to mingling, where I proceeded to apologise over and over, interrupted a meaningful hug between friends and was generally just ready to go crawl under a rock and die.

I spent the drive home crying, the night and subsequent day and night going over the whole damn thing in slow-mo and swearing I’d never leave my house again. I had nightmares both nights, you know those nightmares that feel all too real?

Why am I sharing all of this? Because it’s pertinent to the healing that came today, in between going over it in my head, I journaled, used tools that I have been working on in my sessions, but oddly the healing came out of the incident itself. We were asked to do a worksheet, it was one I had already done a few times, one that I had analyzed before, meditated on and thought I had really spent time thinking about. This time I had just done it in the heat of the moment, what I needed right then, and what I thought was just about the group of women (shills) that had distracted me.

It happened to fall out of my purse this morning, it was folded up but I knew exactly what it was and I didn’t even want to acknowledge that night, I just wanted to hide and figure out a way to stop my sessions with my coach because I was so damn embarrassed and I felt I embarrassed her. I went to just throw it away, but then I was moved to read it, and it hit me like a ton of bricks, so much so that I sunk to the kitchen floor and bawled.

Without revealing too much of the worksheet because it is not my intellectual property, the first question on it reads; “What I desire most is…”, and there in my hurried handwriting is the word patience. Simple, and poignant in its simplicity. That is exactly what I desire most!

Patience with myself, patience with my husband, my toddler, and my teenager. Patience with this journey, instead of finding a new path and a new process in order for a quick fix! Patience in the fact that healing takes time, writing takes time, meditation, and losing weight takes time! These wounds I carry took a long time to make, they are not just going to disappear simply because I acknowledge them. Forgiveness…takes time.

Patience indeed is a virtue, I have been expecting to wake up an entirely different person, because wouldn’t that just be easiest? If I wasn’t myself at all?!

No, friends, I don’t like that idea one bit anymore, I think I’ll be patient and learn about this version first, I’m starting to really like her.

 

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