Finding My Voice
It’s been over a year and a half since my marriage ended. Eighteen months if you want to be precise. In that time there’s been bushfires, a pandemic, I’ve moved house twice, changed jobs, started a business, released three radio singles, two film clips, a video series and an acoustic album (and written over fifty songs). I’ve taken up surfing. Started teaching. Rebuilt my life. It’s been both extraordinarily difficult and rewarding. I’ve missed people. Moving away from the life I had built and rebuilding an entirely different one, I’ve lost friends, I’ve lost family. There is grief in that. So much grief and I’m finding some of it is still only just starting to surface.
It was my birthday this weekend and I decided that for a gift to myself I would give myself a number of things. Firstly, inner peace. I had spent the week prior really wrapped up in some nostalgia, really missing and craving the intimacy I once had with my ex husband. When things aren’t going too well, who am I meant to call? When things are going amazing - who am I going to call then? Who knows me like he does? Who knows those challenges I face as intimately as he does? No one is the answer and that answer still hurts like hell. Sometimes it feels like everyone is wrapped up in their own life, no one really knows me and no one understands what I’m going through or how hard I work to get to where I want to go. That’s total bullshit though and I know it. I have friends, should I choose to actually reach out and tell them I’m struggling. I also have friends who will celebrate with me if I need that too. I’m not great at reaching out (terrible actually) and it’s just not the same - but it’s time that I stopped dwelling on that and gave myself the gift that only I can give myself; freedom. In order to get that I know that I need to stop giving that lying, manipulative ‘nostalgia’ the power I’ve been giving it and look at reality square in the face. If it really was that good, it wouldn’t be over and it’s well and truly over. Only looking back at the good times is just torturing myself and it’s not reality but a bald-faced lie, designed to distract me from the present and rob me of my future. So there’s that.
The other thing I decided to give myself after reading ‘A Mind Of Your Own’ and ‘The War of Art’ was freedom from pharmaceuticals. I’ve been on medication for anxiety and sleep since September 2019 and I know that it’s taking the edge off my life. I need my energy back if I’m going to have enough in my tank to chase my dreams properly. I need the focus and drive and motivation required to kick some serious goals. I need to be able to feel my pain deeply enough to let it do what pain is designed to do; teach me and change me. I need to learn some lessons, feel the hurt, accept it, and move through it and move on. So over the past few months I had been tapering, a couple of weeks ago I stopped the anti-depressants, and I took the last tablet for sleeping the night before my birthday. Needless to say the sleep has not been great but I’m determined to retrain my brain for sleeping. The only way that I’ll do that is by listening to what’s keeping me awake, and doing the healthy things to get myself to sleep naturally (eating well, exercising, meditating, breathing and journaling all my crap out). I also haven’t filled my script for pain medication in two months. I have fibromyalgia and I know that on bad days this is going to be a challenge, but again, I’m going to have to learn how to manage that too. Long epsom salt filled baths, stretching every day, lots of magnesium and vitamin D. I’m also going to use the app ‘Curable’, and do the exercises and try and reduce the impact that my own stress levels and thought patterns play on my pain levels. I know this isn’t going to be easy. I also know that the person that I really want to be isn’t going to come back to the surface while I’m numbing her away and ignoring her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-medication. I just don’t believe it’s a long term solution and there comes a time when you need to figure out how to get back on top of things naturally and for me that time is now.
The last thing that I have decided to give myself for my birthday is my voice. As much as I’ve been singing, writing songs and all that, I haven’t been able to fully share my stories. There has been so much shame attached to my divorce. I’m afraid of sharing that with people. I’m afraid of their judgement (and probably still my own judgement), I’m afraid to tell stories that I’m still living through (I like to tell the ones I’ve gone through once I’m on the other side, fully healed and happy again so it gives hope and leaves me feeling like I’ve achieved something). I’m still living this. I’m still not fully healed. I don’t have a time-line or expectation of a day that I’ll wake up, my heart full, smiling, looking back at peace with the past, grateful for the present and hopeful for the future. Even though some days I actually do wake up like that. It’s just that other days the other side of that coin likes to sneak up and smack me fair in the face. The truth is I’m walking a path that I don’t understand, I haven’t ever travelled before, no one that I’m friends with talks openly about, and for the life of me I cannot find the book that’s titled ‘how to heal from your divorce, stop feeling that empty pit of loneliness and learn how to love again’. I found it easier to share when I was married. I was less afraid of the judgement of others - I wasn’t trying to impress anyone because I had my person and that was enough. I’m coming to understand that I’m ok alone. That I still don’t need to impress anyone. That while I might not have a man backing me and in my corner, I have my own back. I accept me. I guess that’s part of my birthday present too. I accept me. Thus, I can freely speak my truth, as awkward and shameful as it might feel. Ultimately it’s my voice, and I deserve to have it back. Plus, I know, that there are other people out there who are going through similar things and that sometimes just reading someone else's struggle can make you feel like you’re not alone.
So I’m back on the blogging bandwagon. Warts and all. Happy birthday me.
xoMC