Flying To Me
Do you ever feel like time is running out?
Almost 8 years ago, my longtime marriage ended, and I changed my life completely. That unforgettable first year of separation was a year of extremes. Everything I did… I did in a big way.
I have always had a lot of energy but nothing could have prepared me for the burst of energy that I was experiencing. I have always been an energy giver… as opposed to an energy sucker; and even though I was unaware of it, my relationship had been draining me of my energy little by little. Apparently, I had been giving a lot.
So it happened that I was suddenly free of that drain… and I just didn’t know how to harness all that newly found energy. I was going non stop… seriously… I hardly needed to sleep.
However, to add to the mix, I had this pervasive feeling that I was running out of time. It was the same feeling as the one I would get when I was in track and field in school, and I was slow to take off after the GO! I had no choice but to catch up! But the reality was that by being slow at take off, I gave my competitors a handicap advantage. Most likely I would lose that race.
In this instance, I had stayed behind at the starting line.
I think that because I married right out of high school, I didn’t get to live what most of my friends had lived. I had no choice but to become an adult a bit too early. I didn’t even know who I was. Therefore, I felt that I had a lot of catching up to do… and without realizing it, I think I became the oldest “teenager” alive. Well… maybe not a “teenager” but definitely somewhere in the “twenties”.
It was a crazy year… I had to live! I had to experience it all! I was free! I was like a birdie that had just been let out of its cage for the first time … I was flapping and flying here and there, bumping into walls, windows, ceilings, trying to navigate and find my way out. Out of my confusion. Trying to find the way to fly towards the “me” that I had yet to meet.
My life coach would say to me… Relax! You have plenty of time to live, to have romances, to experience lots of things… you are not running out of time!
However, I now know that it was more like a search and rescue mission. I had to find and rescue me…because I had been lost for so long and I was suffocating somewhere.
Almost eight years have now gone by, and they have unequivocally been the best years of my life. There is something very empowering about taking control of the reigns of your life. Up to that moment I had lived for others, the life that others had expected me to live.
It’s been an amazing journey to meet myself and to become my own best friend. As I get to know who I am better, I learn new things about me. At the risk of sounding conceited or full of myself (which I am not!…not even close…really… please believe me?… pleading hands emoji… whatever …eyes rolled up emoji), I really like the creative, fun loving, accepting, giving, expansive, sensitive, loving, and above all, fearless person that I am.
Yes, I admit it…I love myself above everything and everyone. This is a good thing because unless you love yourself, how can you truly love someone else? Who can love you?
So it’s a fact that I take me for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for as long as I shall live and forevermore! In the words of the unforgettable Whitney Houston…”learning to love yourself…it is the greatest love of all”.
