Aidee Douglas

With the New Year coming I have been making a recap of the year, and once I started thinking I couldn’t stop, and before I knew it I started making a recap for almost my whole life. And just like that, sitting in my couch trying to make sense of my mistakes and thanking the higher power, God or whatever you believe in, for leading me to my successes, I had an epiphany. And things made sense. It’s like my life was a movie. I saw it. I understood me. I did like never before.

I had something happen to me when I was really young and then later in life that same event repeated itself. It’s something that I may share in the future, but not now. I ignored what happened to me for 25 years of my life. I just told myself it never happened. I tried to erase it from my head. I didn’t want to rehash something that had hurt me very much. But ignoring it is not fixing it and my soul was broken and it showed me in different ways how broken I was. I needed to face the pain, to fix it. But I didn’t. I didn’t see it. I didn’t listen for 25 years. I was petrified to THAT feeling. I created negative situations to reinforce my detachment with the truth. And those situations were like a distraction from the real pain. For all these years I had this wound, heavy, it was like something I carried around everywhere and it pulled me down. Not all the time, just when I was tired and not present in the moment.

I was so busy with my life that I never had the time to actually think about what had happened to me. I just tried to move on and be merry. See I have learned to not complain, to move on, to see the best of everything, to be thankful, to be strong. Problems are not problems to me, they are just experiences. I fix things. I make things better. And I do it quick. So I built a wall around me to protect me; a wall that closed down my real issues, my real pain. It has taken years to find out what was hurting so bad in my heart.

We all build walls to protect ourselves. Sometimes those walls are thick and really hard to pull down. Sometimes it takes years of battling with unimportant situations to pull the walls down and see the real pain. We can waste the time arguing with our parents, with our partner, or with life, create any kind of drama so we don’t have to face the true. We do different things to numb and avoid the real pain. Pain has different faces and if we don’t listen to it, it will still show up in your life using a new mask. So it could show up as an alcoholic problem, an eating disorder, stealing, drugs, cheating, anything that creates more pain. The pain calls more pain. It’s like a snow ball falling from a very high hill. It just gets bigger and bigger on it’s way down.

So for many years my life was perfect. At least that is what I said. And I learned to think that way. I had perfect parents, a perfect house, perfect car, perfect brother, perfect school. I was a perfect student, perfect girlfriend, and perfect everything. But, I neglected myself. I ignored whatever happened to me. Other things were more important in my life. I felt like I didn’t have time to cry and feel sorry for me. But my soul was broken and my heart was smashed.

I graduated and got married 2 years ago to a wonderful man. My prince charming. In my marriage I had time to breathe and to relax and then it all came to me, the pain, like something was grabbing my chest. My heart was hurting bad. I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. Something was wrong with me. I was scared. And I didn’t  know why I was so extremely sad.

I had pretty good days, things where good, I was feeling optimistic, planning for the future and trying to do my best with the present and then POW! a really bad day would come out of nowhere. I would just wake up gloomy. It was just bad, negative, and I was sad. I felt guilty to feel sad. I was feeling sorry for myself. My life was pretty good, and there I was just feeling sorry for myself, disliking my life. I saw things gray, dark gray. I started reading all kinds of self-esteem books to try to help myself. I hung out with friends, saw a therapist, I took bubble baths, I drank a ton of dirty Chais, joined all kinds of fun groups. But the pain was still there and I didn’t know how to take it away.

The fear of feeling worse did not let me open the door to my real feelings. Oh and there I was making up issues; things that kept dragging me down, things that stopped me from flying, from being entirely happy and entirely in love. I was haunted by my past wounds.

The pain just took over me and I was too sad, too depressed and there it was, with my man by my side, loving me, and listening. I told him everything, everything that my heart was holding on to. So I stopped lying to myself. I saw things the way they were. But I couldn’t understand why I had those ugly things happen to me. I was mad. But again after my confession, after realizing, and accepting my reality, after crying for hours, I went to my old habits and again I made sure nobody new. I made sure nobody saw the pain. I closed down again. I was scared to be vulnerable. I didn’t ask for help. I just pretended I was okay. And the pain kept growing until one day I couldn’t hold it anymore and before I knew it, one night I was in my knees in tears. Then surrender came. And there was just me empty and my husband was holding me and kissing my forehead telling me that it was going to be okay.

Recently I told my whole family what was happening to me. I cried. And I asked for help. And I really just wanted to tell my story. I just wanted them to know. I guess it was part of my healing process.

I was resisting my truth, because the truth hurts. We all have something we are resisting, something that hurts too much to feel and we try to avoid it. We’ve all had traumatic experiences that we want to erase from our life. It could be something that happened to you when you were little or something that happened to you recently. But I think those traumatic experience happened to you to help you unfold your path to greatness and show your capacity to love. Those things make you a better person. It tears all your walls apart and it leaves you there, open, vulnerable, and free.

I am learning. I am exploring. I have many many, many layers to unfold to understand and to heal.