Break on through to the other side...

So, earlier this week I did something completely crazy and out of character. I actually went to visit a psychic. Yes, really. My friend Katrina was having a psychic party and asked me to come. I hadn't seen Katrina in quite some time anyway, so I figured even if the psychic end was silly or useless, st worst I'd get to have a nice time with a friend.

Which is how I ended up at the office of Cindy Newcomb with about twelve other people.  I really wasn't expecting much, maybe some vague statements. Probably nothing that would have much impact on what was actually going on in my life. Needless to say, I was proven wrong. Now I know it sounds absolutely crazy, but I ended up having an experience that touched me in ways I couldn't have imagined and brought to a head everything I was struggling with. It was almost a transcendent and slightly frightening experience. Either this woman is an amazing instant researcher, just really good st reading body language or she has some other gift, whatever that is. All I know is it hit me hard.

So, how did it turn around so fast? In the first five minutes, she had me stand up and told me that Helen was there. And Helen isn't exactly the most common name, but it is the name of my grandmother. There were other little facts that a stranger shouldn't know. Things that even my friends don't know. Even if somehow this woman got my name ahead of time, I don't know how she would have been able to find those things about me. So, that definitlly opened me up to give what she said a chance.

For the next three hours, I watched this woman proceed to go through the lives of everyone in the office. And some of the things she said were pretty impressive and on point, especially the insights she was able to bring out. But, those are their stories and it is not my place to share those with the world. What I will say is that watching her do this with so many others and still be able to share such specific insights with such different people also helped me to listen. At times it was more like a counseling session than a reading.

Which comes to my story. She told me my father was there and that he was sorry about how he acted because of his tools. Now for some background, when my father was diagnosed with cancer, the hardest thing for him was having to watch us shut down his industrial supply business. To say he was angry is an understatement and he made it abundantly clear to us how angry he was, convinced that we were all working against him. Losing his business was worse than the cancer that killed him, because that business was his life. So, hearing that my father was sorry for the way he acted was like a weight lifted. And maybe none of it was real. Maybe she's just really good at reading people. But I'm still going to keep those words with me.

I think I've been doing better about opening up about the struggles I've been having in my life, especially with worries that things won't get better. At times I feel like I'm being held together by scotch tape. But I'm also really good at pretending I'm ok when I'm out in public. The nice thing about scotch tape is that it's invisible. She told me that I'm at the cusp of a new beginning and it's going to work, but only when I can learn to let go. She told me that I was verbally abused (two words I have never been able to say aloud about my marriage, even writing it is hard) and said it'll happen "when you can admit that it was never your fault." Like I said, at times it was almost like a counseling session.

And maybe that's all it was in the long run.  But maybe it was the counseling session I needed at that moment. I needed someone to tell me it's ok to let go of that pain and those memories. It's ok to stop blaming myself.  And it's ok to embrace what will make me happy. I need to embrace those new beginnings, instead of spending my time frightened. So whether she was a psychic or just a really good reader, I should still take those words as the gift they are and think on them.

42. If you were to die tomorrow, what would be your biggest regret? What can you do now to make sure that doesn’t happen?

I think more of my regrets are based on things I have done, rather than things I have yet to do.  I wish I'd made better decisions. I wish I'd learned more from my mistakes, instead of repeating the same patterns. I regret not taking charge of my life earlier. Focusing on crisis management put me behind on building myself up.

I know I need to be more proactive and plan better, rather than putting off the hard tasks and decisions. I need to stop giving into the grayness when it comes on me. I don't want to waste my life feeling sad. I need to find stability. I do find breaking down tasks into smaller steps helps. I've also found working out helps. It helps me get rid of a lot of anger and frustration.  So, I guess feeling better for a few hours after a good workout is still better than not at all. Maybe more refocusing will be good for me.

40. What’s the top priority in your life right now? 41. What are you doing about it?

I put these questions together because they're so connected. It just seemed easier and faster to tackle it in one post. (Maybe this is also evidence of my improved time management skills... Haha)

I think I'm in a position now where I'm viewing things less on a daily basis, less firefighting and crisis management. And now I can focus a little more on planning for longer term goals. But I also have one very important task to complete before I can completely move on to the next phase of my life and that's the divorce.

Divorce isn't easy, especially when you're dealing with so many other issues on top of it. But having the divorce finally settled should contribute to giving me some peace of mind and hopefully should also translate into smoothing out some other stresses in my life. I wish I could've been stronger to get everything finalized quicker. But I didn't, partly because I was naive and thought my ex would be more reasonable and work with me. Then when I realized that wasn't going to happen, I got caught up  in the disappointment, which spiraled into a paralysis, thinking things were never going to get better so it didn't matter how quickly the divorce was finalized. I have to stop losing sight of that better future to work towards.

So, the last few months I've been pushing through the divorce to get my goal of finalization before Christmas. I do not want to start 2015 still married. It's the last string to my old life that I need cut. And I've done everything on my end with the paperwork. It's now down to one last piece of paper my ex needs to sign, then we can finally file. After it's done, maybe I'll be a little closer to where I want to be.  So yes, the thing I've put on hold and my main priority is the exact same thing. All the more reason to get this done.

39. Are you putting any parts of your life on hold? Why?

I am. Waiting for my divorce to finalize is definitely putting my personal life on hold. It's especially frustrating because I'm at the very tail end of the process, I've done everything on my end I need to do  for finalization and all I can do is wait for my soon to be ex husband to finish his end.  As of today, it is own to one single piece of paper that he needs to sign before we can file.

At least he's finally motivated to finish the process now that he has a girlfriend, but in some ways that makes me angrier because I had to wait so long until he finally had motivation to actually do something.  I can't help wonder if dragging his feet and putting up roadblocks to the divorce for three years was his own way of punishing me for leaving. He only got on board with the process when it was convenient for him.

It's also frustrating because I want to move on in my own personal life and the stress of trying to get the divorce finalized has impacted that significantly.  It's caused roadblocks to the future I want to build.  It makes me feel less secure because I don't always trust that my future is really possible. Especially since I didn't leave under the best of circumstances and my current relationship is impacted by that. I want to break free of that past, but I often fear my current partner cannot. It hurts. Why can't it be easier to let go and move forward?

38. Who are the people who have achieved similar goals? … What can you learn from them?

So, way way way back in January I posted my list of goals for 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years.  I've been feeling pretty low over the last few weeks, so looking back and seeing that I've made some progress on my one year goal did give me a little positive twinge.  I am more secure financially.  It's still not where I want to be, but at least I'm not in the cold sweat, "How am I going to make it through each month with my bills and still eat?" territory.  I don't feel secure in a lot of other areas, though and that still bothers me.

And my issues right now are all about getting over the bad things that have happened to me, my worries that I'm just not good enough.  My worries that I can't break free of what I went through, the worries of getting hurt, the worries of not having the life, love, family and emotional security I want to have.  I still have times where I see something or hear something and it brings back some flashback and it's horrible. The stuff I went through, it stays with me.  And I feel so alone.  I don't know how other people move on from it,  because I don't even know how to find people who talk, really talk about those struggles without sounding like a bad Lifetime movie.  I don't want to read self-help or platitudes or cute Pinterest quotes over pretty backgrounds.  Things like that don't inspire me, they just depress me more because it's not really that simple.  I don't know where to find those people who can make me feel better and can teach me how to really let go in a realistic, non-treacly way.  So, if there's someone out there that can do that, please point them in my direction.