Alone Again...Naturally

Not so very long ago I dreaded being alone, that is where I did most of my eating.  My children have now all flown away and my husband is married to his job.  I spent many a day, week, month or year pretty much alone anyway, even surrounded by my family I kept alone, well within the confines of those walls that I so meticulously built. Growing up in constant abuse teaches one to  keep quiet and do your best to blend.  It was my desire always to be a wallflower, never dreaming of grand plans, never desiring the best of life, just learning to hope for enough.

I am blessed to have found a husband that truly does accept me for who I am, not asking more of me than I can give.  He has certainly lived through some pretty bleak times with me and never wavered in his commitment to me or our marriage. He too has walls, tall ones with some pretty sturdy material that even after 25 years of marriage I have not managed to weaken.  Seeing him through the years never feel good enough has caused me a great deal of pain but strangely enough it has of late taught me not to do the same.  His constant feelings of inferiority have been overshadowed only by my own.  As this surgery has given me fresh perspective and renewed hope I now see that these feelings are overdue to be challenged.

Now seeing my father as a lost and scared individual causes me to revisit my abuse and recognize it in a different light.  There isn't an excuse for abusing a helpless child, there never will be, but now as an adult it is easier to view the experience as being perpetrated by a sick individual whose own personal needs were never addressed and met.  Gone is the hate that once firmly gripped me, gone is the terrified girl that so often hid in a closet praying to escape that days beating.

We come here alone, we leave here alone, we gather experiences, hopes, enlightenment and if we are lucky we gather peace.  So at this junction I can say proudly that being alone is no longer scary, it is no longer something to fear.  Alone is where I now recharge, it is where I listen, it is where nature whispers to me, it is where I have begun to disassemble all the walls that have for so many years protected yet prevented me from living.  As my years of fat begin to melt something new and exciting is emerging, I can't wait to get to know that lady in the mirror a little better...alone, naturally.