Down the rabbit hole.

“Sometimes you just have to shift your focus from how did I get here;
to how do I leave here.”

People often ask me my story. I don’t offer to make it a topic of conversation but I am not afraid to tell you if you ask. It is all just facts to me now. It happened and it is a part of me. I always wonder though how they see me after they know. I wonder how you see me after you read my posts. Has your view of me changed if you know me? How do you see me if you don’t know me? I try to put myself in your shoes but we all see things the way we want to see them. Not necessarily how they are. And how you see things is something I have no control over.

My story is not easy to understand unless you have lived a similar story. Walked a similar path. If my writing can help one person then it is worth putting myself out there on the world wide web for all to see. For all to judge. But if you judge, that’s yours – keep it. It does not affect me.

I was so young when I first met my husband. I was waiting for adventure but had no idea how to look for it. To afraid to look for it. I knew I wanted more from life. I wanted bigger and better. But I was so painfully shy. I was not courageous or confident enough to stand on my own. I lived in an imaginary quiet room with no windows because that was safe. I liked it there because the big bad world couldn’t hurt me. The world couldn’t hurt me because I was prettier than some. Couldn’t think I was a bitch because I didn’t know how to talk to people. Couldn’t laugh at me because I said something silly and not on purpose. I was too sensitive for any of it. So I just sat in my little imaginary room and waited for adventure to come get me. Then it did. I was such an easy target. I was all too willing to ride on the coattails of someone who seemed to know where to find adventure. Someone who could paint the right image, imaginary though it was. I wanted adventure the easy way. So… I fell down the rabbit hole.

I have spent many hours contemplating how I ended up where I did. It didn’t make sense to me. And in order to heal, I needed it to make sense. I had a dream childhood. Great parents, great home, great life. But as I have said before and will say again, we are all accountable for our journey. We make the choices that put us on our path. And we can choose to learn from those choices or we can blame everyone and everything else for our circumstances. I blame no one. In my case, I found someone to lead me. I let that happen. I was not ready and willing to take control of my own failures and successes and I paid for it. That’s okay. I am in a better place because of it.

I am still that sensitive girl that hurts deeply. But I also care deeply. Love deeply. I don’t know any other way to do it. It is who I am but at least now I have courage and strength to keep me out of the rabbit hole.