I have been at a crossroads for a while now. I started this blog right as my life was really starting to fall apart. I spent years working on my mental health, getting my degree, building my career, building my credit, and really trying to set myself up for success. But I made one fatal mistake: I married the wrong man. He was a manipulative alcoholic whom I believed I could fix with enough love. Kind of a cliché, huh? He had gotten his hooks in me seven years prior, and I left him when the abuse became physical. But that hold he had on me – it was something I didn’t know how to escape. So I went back. Years later. Because I was stuck. I felt I needed to face my past so I could move forward. I decided to go back to where it happened. To face the life I had lost. The good and the bad. At first, I didn’t know he had moved back there, but I ended up talking to him again, and it was good. I thought things were different. That, with years apart, he had grown. It was profoundly idiotic. But I think I just wanted to make all those years I had spent stuck mean something. So I tried to force it to mean something. I married him. And it was a choice that nearly destroyed me.
I left him after two and a half years of marriage. He got physical again, and that was my line. It is so much easier to draw a clean line at physical abuse than at emotional abuse. But all the harm he did to me prior to the night I called the cops on him far outweighs anything he ever did physically. Even when I left again, I was still stuck. But when he couldn’t get at me anymore, that’s when he started turning all his emotional abuse, manipulation, and self-destruction on the other people in his life. That is when I broke free. Watching as he terrorized and hurt every person who loved him. It was detestable. Repugnant. And it was my freedom.
It is now nine months since our separation. Five months since the divorce was finalized. And I am still rebuilding. Paying off debt that only exists thanks to him. Rebuilding my credit. Rebuilding myself as a person. Building a new life. Trying to teach my body that I am safe. That I no longer need to be in survival mode all the time. That I don’t have to be scared all the time. And it’s fucking hard. It is so much harder than I ever thought it could be. Nine months since our separation, and I am only just starting to get enough energy back to be able to do anything after I get off work at 4 pm. And I still can’t most days. The exhaustion is so heavy, and no amount of sleep fixes it. Neither does forcing myself to push through. I’m told this is normal after a divorce. It is a journey that I have to take one step at a time. There’s no rushing it. I have learned that the number one thing I need to focus on as I move forward is to teach my body that it is safe again. I spent so long in survival mode, and even though my life is completely different now, it is taking a lot longer for my body to understand that fact than my conscious mind.
To this end, I recently started working on vagal nerve stimulation, which is something I will talk about more in the future, but what you need to know now is that the vagal nerve is the primary component of the parasympathetic nervous system. It is responsible for calming you after a period of stress, reducing your heart rate, and managing digestion. Its function can be impaired by chronic stress, such as that I was under in my marriage. So I’m working on fixing that as a primary way of teaching my body it’s safe again. And it’s actually working, albeit slowly. It’s helping me to get some of my energy back.
I am also getting my curiosity back, which is profoundly gratifying. I’ve been trying to figure out my next steps. I have a successful career that compensates me well, but is not fulfilling for me. I have a new home that I love near family. I have a long-distance relationship that is incredibly loving and brings me joy, but that would require me to move across the country in the future to continue to pursue.
Recently, I was talking to one of my cousins, and I asked him why he chose his career. He’s a pilot, and he told me he chose that because it was the option that scared him. He had also considered becoming an electrician. He told me he knew he could succeed at being an electrician, but he didn’t know if he could succeed as a pilot. So he chose the path that scared him. I’ve been thinking about that answer a lot. I’ve tried a number of paths, but I have never really put my whole self into the thing that scares me.
I have flirted with writing my whole life. I start, and I stop. I spent years telling myself that I have crippling writer’s block and can never succeed as a writer. It’s funny: My job requires a fair bit of writing, and I still always say I’m not a writer. I’m an editor. I just write sometimes, but it’s not what I am. And I’m not sure why I do that. Beyond the fact that writing business plans professionally is boring, and journaling isn’t professional writing.
I started this blog when I was nearing a tipping point in my marriage. I was still telling myself I was happy, but we were struggling financially because I was the only one contributing financially. And I love the idea of blogging. I love the idea of helping people, of being my own boss, of setting my hours, and of the potential. So I started this blog as an attempt to dig out of the financial hole my husband got me in. A way to escape the job I hated. A way to help people. A way of following a dream.
And then, it started to work. I was getting readers. People were starting to sign up for my newsletter. I wasn’t making money yet, but what I was doing was working. All I had to do was keep going.
And that is when I stopped.
Because getting those readers, having people sign up for my newsletter, and having this blog actually work terrified me. And yes, I had a lot of things in my life that were taking up most of my energy. But that’s not the real reason I stopped. I stopped because this path scared me. Even working in my job, where I do a significant amount of writing, I was still terrified to be a writer. So I walked away before I ever had the chance to fail or succeed.
Now, as I’m rebuilding my life, I keep thinking about what my cousin said. He chose to be a pilot because that’s the path that scared him. And I’m realizing that our fears tell us what’s important. When we are in danger, we are afraid because our life is important. When we worry about a person, it’s because they matter to us. And when a career path scares us, it’s because we really want it. Of all the life paths that I have considered, nothing scares me so much as writing does. So today, I declare that I am a writer. I’m taking back this blog. Later, I’ll return to the book I started shortly before I separated from my ex-husband. It’s time I started listening to my fear, as it tells me what’s important. It’s time to start facing my fears instead of running away from them.
I leave you with this question: what scares you?
