I am so grateful for the sand in my shoe, for that rock that made me uncomfortable, all the people and circumstances that I depended on THEM for changing before I could be happy. I am so grateful for the failures, the disempowering conversations, the misery that followed. I am extremely grateful that I considered suicide—one time—and am also grateful for not following through.
“Why?” You ask. It seems that I needed to be really miserable before I was willing to give up that I knew anything. My questions about life, “Is this all there is? Why am I so miserable? There must be a reason I am here—but I’m just not smart enough to figure that out? What could it be? How can others be so danged happy? What did I miss? Maybe if I had different parents, a different environment, born a different race or in another culture?
Conversations in my head were numerous and non-ending, though, in retrospect, the conversations said the same thing over and over and over again. Most nights I could not sleep, got up, and had those conversations in another room so my family could not hear me. Exhaustion sometimes prevented me from getting the laundry done or the grocery shopping completed. My point of view was to blame all others until I made it known that I was going to a support group for people who had friends and family who were like THEM! It was all their fault, whoever “they” were at the time.
My expectations were that I would encounter others in the room who would share how bad their life was, how others in their lives were also messing up their worlds. Together, then, we could plan ways to make THEM understand that if THEY only listened to US, all would be well with the world.
Imagine my surprise when I visited this support group and found a bunch of people who were happy, yet they had circumstances much worse than mine. HOW DO THEY GET TO BE THAT HAPPY WITH THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES? “What do you mean I need to look at myself?” I asked. “Come to six meetings,” they said, “and if this doesn’t work for you, you can leave and take your misery with you.” WHAT?
That was when it started, Christmas Eve some 25 or so years ago. I was only in my mid-40s then. It took me working slogans, working steps, then moving on to different spiritual paths to which I felt drawn, different workshops, different books, different ways of looking at this, looking at that. Someone who was trying to stop me or prevent me from this path told me, “All that is a bunch of horseshit and not true.” My reply, “Maybe it is. However, as I read this stuff and study this spiritual path and continue to explore this line of thinking, my life is peaceful regardless of my circumstances.”
Money comes; money goes. People come; people go. People die. Circumstances come; circumstances go.
Suppose we create it all? Well, maybe we don’t, but look and see? Are there some circumstances that you can take responsibility for how they showed up? What if we are all on the cutting edge, and we create our own reality? What if I took responsibility for whom I dated, for whom I married, for who showed up in my social circle? What if I took responsibility for the conversations I have inside my own head, even with the people I went to school with more than 50 years ago? What if I don’t blame the economy for my financial demise, but I get the gift I was creating for myself out of what I could create later? What if I just go be grateful for all of it—nothing left out? What else could I create if I weren’t thinking about how bad it was? What if?