Running Away

After the mess the other morning, with you and her on the phone, I went out into the garden to meditate. I'd been neglecting my spiritual studies and my friend, the one who takes such good care of me, has been pressuring me to spend more time on them. I was so lost without you. I was broken, and angry and lost. I didn't even know what I would say to the Goddess. If I was going to ask her for refuge or favors, what they would be. I told her honestly I didn't know what I wanted, what I needed. I told her I was so lost, just wandering. I pictured a silent woods inside my head.

All at once I felt a great calm descend on me. When I had been on the phone I'd felt numb and that my world was going slowly as yours was moving much too fast, but I didn't feel calm. Out in the garden, with the Goddess, I felt calm. As if my brain were suddenly a much quieter place. and I heard her voice.

She asked "When are you going to stop running away?"
I asked, "Running away from what?"
She replied, "When are you going to stop running away from yourself?"

I am astounded by how often the answer can be right in front of us and yet we may never see it. By then I was exhausted and vowed to return another day to find out what she was talking about.

This afternoon I woke suddenly from a nap know exactly what she was talking about. Instinctively, I knew that I'd been running from fear. While married I had someone to take the fall for all the bad things that happened to us. Whether that was me playing the blame game or if he really was just that bad at making grown up decisions, I'll never know. What I do know is that I don't have a fall guy anymore. Any decision that is made that leads to something unfortunate happening to me or my family is MY FAULT. I don't get to blame or share responsibility anymore. Everything is me. That's pretty damn scary when you think about it. It's like opening your front door and realizing you don't have a yard anymore, that it just falls into empty space like in the sequel to Jumanji.

So I've been running away from having to face that realization. I've been running away from having to begin making those choices. I've been running away from myself.

That doesn't make what I feel for you any less real. I still love you, miss you, will always hope that there is a small chance you can be a part of my life. What it does is it excuses you from the responsibilities that I tried to heap upon you because I was too scared to bear them myself. Taking care of myself, dealing with my health, making sure I took my meds and drank enough water and ate were responsibilities I tried to hand to you. And you took them, willingly. And you helped me with those things, you reminded me when to eat, drink, or even sometimes when to urinate because I was so caught up in the fear I couldn't remember to guide myself. Those activities of daily living were my responsibility. I ran away from myself.

I'm not angry at you for running away from me. Or toward her.
I hope I can get you back at some point in time. Some day or some year or some lifetime.
But I'm done running.