(Pretty) Full Disclosure

I used to be a mean, angry, selfish, self-centered little girl, all alone in the world.  I tried to solve my problems myself but the only tools I had in my arsenal were fight, run, blame and playing solitaire, even though I was quite smart.  Soon after my 22^nd birthday, I came to the point where had ceased doing silly things like eating and sleeping.  I had run everybody off.  No one was talking to me.  Except poor Dan, the one hostage I had left.  And I wouldn’t really say he was talking to me. It was more like he was doing his own crazy thing and every once in a while we’d be in the same room together, at which point I would go all cataclysmic and shit. 

15 years ago in November, I ran out of all my crazy ideas and those crappy tools had up and quit serving me altogether. 

You know all that stuff about darkest before the dawn?

It turns out at the end of my rope were these beautiful answers.  With some help implementing these answers in my life, I have traded in fight for surrender, run for commitment and integrity, blame for accepting responsibility for my own life, and playing solitaire for a full full full life where I love a lot of people and a lot of people love me.  I’d like to think, at my best, I’m sometimes an example of what the power of Love and the power of God can do for a person.

I’ve written before about this idea of transparency.  It’s really intriguing to me, seeing as one of my default settings is secrecy.  I don’t know where I got the idea, but for much of my life I believed that I needed to hide the truth about who and what I was and what my life was REALLY like at all costs.  If I pretended hard enough that everything was okay, if I didn’t say out loud how dirty and pathetic and consumed with fear I was, then it must not be true. If I made sure things looked a certain way on the outside, spun my warped version of the truth in such a way, then you wouldn’t know what was really going on, and by proxy, I wouldn’t know what was going on either.

My goal for a little while now has been to live more and more transparent every day.  Not only because living in secrecy and denial is so poisonous, but because the more transparent I am with you and me, the clearer the channel is to God, to Creativity, to Love.  What that has meant in a practical way is that I have to keep revealing these awful truths about myself and my sick mind, because when it’s out in the light, when I can laugh at it, it doesn’t own me anymore.

The ugly truth today is that I have to postpone school.  For reasons in and out of my control.  The cool thing is that not one of these reasons has anything to do with me running away or being in fear or sabotaging myself.  In my past, (maybe not so long ago) I would have used this circumstance to confirm how little I thought about myself and what I deserve.  It would be very easy to see this as the Universe conspiring against me at every turn.  Except, boy, that’s just not working for me anymore either.  I contributed to these circumstances for sure.  If my life isn’t my fault, I’m screwed.  I can take responsibility for my part in this.  And for a moment I was heartbroken and devastated.  Fear of humiliation and failure runs deep.  But that's not all there is.

This morning, after taking the actions I know DO work for me – getting out of my head, reading some spiritual things and writing and praying – I feel like I have things a little bit in perspective.  I’m not sitting in anger or blame or sadness this morning. I’m not steeped in self-pity or martyrdom.  (At least not right at this moment.)  I’m actually sitting in trust and hope and all those other cheesy things of which I was once a scoffer.

This morning I know that postponing school does not mean the end.  I know that as much as my stomach - eh-hem - I mean my EGO hurts having to admit this to you, as much as I don’t like thinking about going to KC and my classmates to say goodbye for now, it doesn’t have to be that big a deal.  It’s just for right now.  The door to school or creativity or my life is not closed, no matter what my bad head says.  That thing lies all the time, so why would I listen to it?  And, who knows, maybe something else will work out.  My God is certainly bigger than these troubles.

I guess that’s what brought me to this point.  I want God’s will for me more than I want my own.  It works better.  I don’t sit on the floor these days playing solitaire waiting for Dan to come home so I can yell vile and vicious things at him in the hopes he’ll stop what he’s doing and say, "Gosh, Gaaby, you’re right, I’m going to change right now so that you can be happy for once in your life!"  I don’t chase everybody out of my life with my mean-hearted, damaging actions.  I’m not run by fear and resentment.  

There are some days when I contribute to the harmony, rather than the confusion.

If my will could have gotten me here, you can bet your sweet patootie I wouldn’t do all the things I have to do in order to maintain my connection to the other will.  But I want to maintain the connection.  On good days, I’m hooked into the source.  Hooked in enough that I am not swayed by what goes on outside of me.  If God, or Good, is involved in this, then there’s no reason to judge it one way or another.  It doesn’t need to be about disappointment or hurt or sadness.  It doesn’t need to be about taking steps backwards or not fulfilling something that needed to be fulfilled.  It’s just another stop on the path.

My intention is to keep you posted.  I’m going to talk to KC today. Maybe something fun will happen that I can tell you about.  If not, I feel confident that I can stay on the path of growth and transparency – in whatever form.  My wish is that when the times comes that I get back into this particular swing of things, you will all cheer loudly and for a long time.