The Difference Healing Makes

I’m having a hard trigger day. It’s been that way from the moment I woke up this morning until now as I’m just about falling asleep.

The difference is today I’m able to stay on top of it instead of in it. Yes, I have felt many emotions, I have expressed much anger, I have felt awful all day, I have blocked many people on Facebook. And I have not pretended that any of this was not so. I have talked about it all day.

But I was still able to get done everything I needed to do today. I didn’t let it overtake me and turn me against myself.

And that’s because I have hope for the future – not because I expect society to improve immediately, but because I am now clear on the life I’m creating for myself where I both understand and enforce my boundaries. I might be violated again, but I will never again enable it by pretending it was ok.

I’ve often compared my body storing trauma to a house on an episode of Hoarders – the clutter piles up inside until you can’t live there anymore. Well, I spent all day today taking out the trash. I’m exhausted from how many times I’ve run to the curb and back, but it’s no longer inside the house.

You can’t take away the experience of living in my body from me again. I’m not relinquishing that, no matter how awful you are. You can’t take away the world I’m creating for myself through the cultivation and practice of discernment, a world where people with beliefs and behaviors that oppress me are no longer granted access to me. There is no way you can take that from me, because I am creating it.

Tonight I’m in bed self-soothing with visions of the future I’m creating through my choices and I feel good. I feel good because even though I loudly desire and advocate for the world to be fair, I no longer rely on it to be. I’m not waiting on anything else before I start creating my own happiness.

That’s the difference healing makes.