on being an ox

Sick loved ones, discord among the same, an unkind ending, a bruised heart, crippling depression, unexpected career changes, insomnia, loss of weight, instability just about every which way I turn...nice try world. I'm still here. You didn't break me.

I read a story the other day about a woman who asked her guides why life had to be so hard at times. They answered by drawing comparison to an ox, animals known for their strength and endurance, asking her how an ox would know it possessed such strength if it weren't required to pull such heavy loads now and again.

I get it. I'm an ox.

For a while I couldn't make sense of the last few months. Why I was buried under so much...stuff...and why every time I thought I'd reached my maximum - something else was added. I have never, in all of my life, been so blackly depressed. It wasn't just about the end of a relationship, it was about me. So to all those people who kept saying "it's been a while, you should get over it", you got it wrong. It wasn't about getting over the boy.

I don't think I'll ever *not* feel that the way things ended was unkind and, of course, I miss many things but I don't miss the struggle of trying to matter. With the hindsight of the way things were ended I can see what I refused to see at the time - that I didn't ever matter the way I wanted to. I couldn't have. We didn't want the same things from life or from each other and neither of us was wrong, we were just wrong together. That difference, that I stuck around so long, and that there wasn't more straightforward communication has been a bitter pill to swallow. Still, in the end his stuff is his stuff, mine is mine. My stuff was about clarifying what I want from life, about how I want to be treated in a relationship, about having stayed where I shouldn't have because I was afraid to lose someone, about trying to resist change, about settling, about working too hard at times, about losing faith in myself, and, even more so, about losing faith that I'm going to be ok. I've never lost that faith before - no longer believing that I was going to be alright was the hardest part of all. For a while I was buried beneath the heavy, dark, suffocating impossibility of it all.

But I'm through it. There's been a shift and I feel as if I'm lit from inside again. I'm glowing. Last night I went down to the lake, lay on the rocks by the water and looked up through the crisp autumn air at the stars and I found myself whispering "I'm alive". It was delicious. A celebration of that absolute kicking, dancing, twirling joy at the very fact that I get to be alive in this body, in this reality, in this life when only a few weeks ago I wondered how I could possibly drag myself out of bed to face one more day (and on many days, I simply didn't).

It was hard having my stuff thrown in my face in such an abrupt manner and by someone I trusted not to hurt me, but would I have paid attention any other way? I'm not so sure. It it had been left up to me, I would never have ended things. But it wasn't up to me alone and so I've learned about acceptance - even for those things that I don't welcome - and I've learned things about myself that I never, ever would have opened myself up to if I hadn't been forced into it. I'm grateful. I wouldn't know what I wanted, what I was ready for, and what I'm capable of if without the last couple of months. I want to acknowledge that I was lucky to have had that relationship with that person with that terrible ending and with that broken heart. Very, very lucky. Without it I wouldn't know what I want and I wouldn't be prepared for what I get to go on to next. I wouldn't know that I'm an ox!

Now I know. Now I'm ready. Now I can say thank you.

Thank you.