It feels so amazingly good!
Having an outlet to express, having trusted confidants and a great therapist are making it all possible.
Almost weekly, sometimes more I have a moment of intense enlightenment.
Today I had several!!!
I was explaining to my therapist about the "golf ball" me that I have only just discovered. Actually what I discovered is that I am a basket full of balls. Each one a different facet of my personality. Many have been buried for years. Some are inappropriate but most are amazing.
He suggested that I look at it in a different way. Instead of being a basket of different golf balls I should look at myself as one ball with many dimples. The average golf ball has 176 dimples, carved out places, indention's. The purpose is to make the ball go farther so they are constantly rearranging them, adding and subtracting.
I am like a golf ball. I am full of indention's, dimples. These are the many facets of my personality. They are what make me, me.
I was a fun loving, reckless, gypsy soul as a teenager. I had few to no boundaries and lived by the "if it feels good do it" rule. It seems that my husband who is the polar opposite of no boundaries was only allowed "rules, rules, rules". He was drawn to me because I was a challenge. He wanted something that would challenge the limited existence he lived. He wanted something to bring him out into the life. I offered that. With me he was challenged, he was invigorated, but he was also out of his comfort zone. In time he became more and more uncomfortable but he still wanted what I had.
This is an ingrained tendency put in us by the creator. It's what keeps the human race advancing- "opposites attract". What I have he didn't and visa versa. Together we create a whole. It is what keeps our race from digressing. We are drawn to opposites, we create children who now have many of the strengths and differences of both parents.
When we married I desperately needed protection. He provided a safe place, stability and security. Because I was so different in my life views but too wounded and weak to care if I was true to myself or not, I very quickly began to conform to his life views.
On one hand he wanted me to be like him. On the other he missed the free spirited, fun loving girl he fell in love with. But his strong upbringing won out and I became an extension of him. I was still a golf ball, but I began to lose my dimples, my indention's, my uniqueness. I became a smooth ball.
Fast forward a lot of years; something happened and all of a sudden I remembered, longed for and demanded to be the multi-dimpled, multi-faceted girl from so long ago. This direct slap in the face to all I was as a mirror image of him was very quickly rejected and the fight was on.
I've swung so far away from the middle trying to get away from his polar direction that I have swung out of control and into dangerous territory.
I am beginning to find my core again. Who am I? What do I want? How can I be and do and still function in the normal world? All good questions I am exploring and slowly answering.
Today I learned that I don't have to split myself into a hundred different balls. I can be one with many different facets.
My assignment is to label and write about the dimples.
My therapists exact words were "write a book. each dimple will be a chapter. they will be open ended because you will want to add to them. you will find that some that you thought were crucial really aren't. you will find that some spin off in another hundred different directions. just start by giving them names and writing about them. from this we will begin to find the true you."
Cool isn't it?!!!
It is to me.
People have been telling me for years to write a book. I guess I'm gonna do it after all.
I had another major epiphany today but it will have to wait. My time is coming to a close.
I am excited. I am growing, changing, learning. It is good. I am good. elle
"Gravity"alison krauss
http://youtu.be/B-xDppR2dAs
"I left home when I was seventeen
I just grew tired of fallin' down
And I'm sure I was told
The allure of the road
Would be all I found
And all the answers that I started with
Turned out questions in the end
So years roll on by
And just like the sky
The road never ends
And the people who love me still ask me
When are you coming back to town
And I answer quite frankly
When they stop building roads
And all God needs is gravity to hold me down
And the people who love me still ask me
When are you coming back to town
And I answer quite frankly
When they stop building roads
And there ain't no more highways to be found
And I answer quite frankly
When they stop building roads
And all God needs is gravity to hold me down"
I turned seventeen in November,
I was pregnant by December and
I was married in February...
And I thought, "this is me, I'm elle".
"At Seventeen" janis ian
http://youtu.be/zEYepr0Zm1E
"I learned the truth at seventeen,
That love was meant for beauty queens.
In high school, girls with clear-skin smiles,
Who married young and then retired.
The valentines I never knew.
The Friday night charades of youth,
Were spent on one more beautiful.
At seventeen I learned the truth.
And those of us with ravaged faces,
Lacking in the social graces,
Desperately remained at home,
Inventing lovers on the phone.
Who called to say come dance with me.
And murmured vague obscenities.
It isn't all it seems,
At seventeen.
A brown-eyed girl in hand-me-downs
Whose name I never could pronounce,
Said, "Pity, please, the ones who serve,
They only get what they deserve."
And the rich-relationed, hometown queen,
Marries into what she needs.
With guarantee of company,
And haven for the elderly.
Remember those who win the game,
Lose the love they sought to gain.
In debentures of quality,
And dubious integrity.
The small-town eyes will gape at you,
In dull surprise, when payment due,
Exceeds accounts received.
At seventeen.
To those of us who knew the pain,
Of valentines that never came.
And those whose names were never called,
When choosing sides for basketball.
It was long ago and far away,
The world was younger than today.
And dreams were all they gave for free,
To ugly-duckling girls like me.
We all play the game and when we dare,
We cheat ourselves at solitaire.
Inventing lovers on the phone,
Repenting others lives unknown,
That call and say, come dance with me,
An' murmur vague obscenities,
At ugly girls like me,
At seventeen."
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