Writing, Reading, Reflection

So, tell me, honestly, what do you think about when you awake in the morning?  What were those first few thoughts as you became aware of your surroundings, as you began to climb out of dream land and recognize the movement of your legs, the pillow beneath your head, the covers touching your skin?

Here were my thoughts this morning. (Recognize, I KNOW I likely do not think like everyone else! )

I have left 99 percent of my baggage along the side of the road in the last five years. Several years and thousands of dollars on therapy (and Lexipro) have allowed me to set down the suitcase of hate, the handbag of ugliness, the trunk of fear, the backpack of constant uneasiness…I’m so much lighter. My shoulders are not bogged down. I awake with so much less pain in my joints. I awake relaxed and rejuvenated because I am not hauling around those extra pounds that I took on when I was a little girl and had no other ways of coping, as a teenager when I had taken it all on to hide what I was truly feeling, as a twenty-something when I didn’t know any other way of dealing with things.

By 30, I was really good at catching the baggage thrown at me, and I was even better at shopping for more to add to the pile. Imagine purposefully seeking out more baggage? Comical, huh?

Then, something snapped. I could no longer carry it all. I wanted to run. Who can run when bogged down with bags and suitcases and trunks full of junk accumlated from issues with other people?  I began to shed them. One by one.

Today as I awoke, this all came to me. The baggage is nearly gone. Sure, occasionally someone picks up a piece of it and hurls it at my head. Too, there are days I walk down one of those roads where I left a pile of that baggage and I trip over it, fall on my face. Even get a little bloody and bruised. But let me tell you how much easier it is to recover from a goose egg on the back of your head, or jump up and dust myself off–so much easier than lugging a thousand and three pounds up and down the stairs each day, hunched and sweating, gasping for air, with no end in sight.

Thank god for the year I took to toss the baggage off, one piece at a time. It was painful. It’s like someone who is buried under a building that collapses in an earthquake. What follows the removal of the brick and wood is far more painful and dangerous than the collapse itself. The body has a hard time readjusting once it’s been crushed. Unlike in medicine, though, in therapy there is no pressurized machine to wrap around the leg, the arm, the heart to help ease it back to normal. And, of course, when normal is such a distant memory, the body and mind have even more difficulty knowing when “normal” has been reached.

A year of unearthing, rediscovering, coming to terms with what normal is and/or can be.  Realizing that each interaction, each experience is a lesson we are being given. If we don’t get the lesson the first time, it will happen again, and again, and again until we get it. Having the ability to vocalize what the lesson is and verbalizing what you’ve learned from the experience and how it’s changed your way of life and following through. Otherwise, the lesson will come around again, and sometimes it will be more painful the second time around.

I know that when I trip and fall–that is normal. Just pick yourself up. Dust yourself off. Take a walk, a Tylenol, a nap, a break, a deep breath. In the great scheme of things, it’s all okay.  Life is all about learning and unearthing the best part of who we are so that we can contribute to the common good of the world. If we do not recognize that is the purpose of our lives, then we will continue to be souls burdened by baggage, struggling against the current of the direction we are meant to be going.

Yes, these were my waking thoughts. Several years ago, I made a pact with myself to analzye my life before I fell asleep. Did I do my very best today? If not, why? What do I need to do differently tomorrow to ensure that I do the right thing? Because of that pact, I’ve found I awake almost every morning wondering what path my life with take today.