Down to My Last Two Percent

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.

And everyone you love is made of stardust 

and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply,

 and the night sky is no home, 

and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that

 you are down to your last two percent, 

but nothing is infinite, 

not even the loss. 

You are made of the sea and the stars, 

and one day you are going 

to find yourself again.

                                         - Finn Butler

If I could tell you just one thing today, it would be this:

If you are struggling and feeling lost,
you will find yourself again.

You may not feel that at all.

Your circumstances may not indicate that is even possible.

The landscape of your life may feel like foreign soil.

I know this place very well.

I spent so much time last year wondering how I would ever recover from my losses. It had been a series of blows over several years. I wasn't sure who I was anymore. I wasn't suicidal but I did lay in bed at night and think that death would be a welcomed relief. I would look at my precious sleeping daughter. I would think about the life she would have if I died and that gave me a teeny, tiny glimmer of hope and a desire to keep going. I had a baby idea that maybe I would eventually find my way out of the darkness.

I clung to that idea.

I tried to believe what my friends were saying.
I relied on their love and support as if my life depended on it.
Because it did.

I lived out of a suitcase for 11 months.

For the sake of a good story, let's just round that up to a year. 

Several trusted friends kept telling me how brave I was but I can assure you that I did not feel brave in any way. I felt completely and utterly broken. I would say, "Maybe one day I will look back and see that I was brave but right now I don't even know who I am." I have never cried so many tears in my life. I thought  maybe they were going to name a new river after me. I had never felt so scared and so vulnerable. 

Nothing looked the same.

Everything that I thought made me...me, was gone.

The people, places and things that were part of my identity,
 the very fiber of my being.....gone.

I went from living in a town with less than 1000 people and the nearest city having a population of 30,000 to living in a  city of more than half a million. I went from living on a dirt road to dealing with multiple interstates to go anywhere. I cried when I realized I didn't even know where the grocery store was. I had to use a GPS to find  food. I had no idea where I was, literally and figuratively. I went from a 3000 square foot dream house to all of my belongings fitting in a  10x12 storage unit. I had a 7 year old daughter, $1400, a suitcase full of clothes, a box of books, my car and wonderful friends who so lovingly said...... 
"come stay with me for awhile."

I believe that life will show you on the outside what needs changing. When the players in your game of life stop playing fair or being kind, it isn't about them. It is about you and what you need to change. It can be very hard to look inside and see what's wrong, that is why we often need an outside circumstance to show us exactly what we need to see. And trust me...it will show itself multiple times in different ways. You have many chances to get the lesson. Eventually it will be too painful to ignore. I will tell you that story another day but trust me...there was a defining moment where I knew my life was going to change in a huge way. It took a good long while before I was actually putting my things into storage and driving away from the life that I had known. It was not an an easy decision and it was not an overnight decision. It was a full year of soul searching. Including four months where I only got out of bed to take my daughter to school. For real. 

Somebody recently told me that I was a runner. 

In their opinion I had run away from my problems creating even more problems for myself and others. I entertained this idea for less than 60 seconds. Someone who stays in a marriage for 25 years is not a runner. Someone who lives 5 miles from their hometown is not a runner. Someone who has emotionally and physically cared for their aging father is not a runner. Someone who has raised 4 children as a stay at home mother is not a runner. I felt the urge to say all of these things in order to defend myself and that probably lasted less than 60 seconds too. I felt attacked and of course my initial reaction was to defend myself. But why? What good would that do? I have become very guarded about how I choose to spend my precious energy. Defending myself is no longer important to me. I am more than happy to carry on with MY life and let you think whatever you want to think. 
In fact, what you think is really none of my business. I have a million better things to do than convince anyone of anything.

Did it matter what this person thought about MY life?
And what if I was a runner?
So what.
What I do know as my deepest truth is the only running 
I was doing was running towards myself. 

For the very first time in my life.

I knew my children were watching me and that they might someday need to search back in their memory bank for what to do when it came time to protect the women and children. Who was going to be their example if it wasn't me?

The funny part is that I have less problems now. 
I have less sadness and way more joy. WAY more.
I have more peace and contentment than I have ever known.
I have more self-respect, more self-love.
I have more compassion for myself and everyone else.
 I did not in any way relate to what this person was saying. 
It was his reality, NOT mine.

*I feel it is important to mention here that you may be wondering who this person is, and although I want to keep that private, I will say that it is NOT the father of my children. I have a fierce desire to protect him and all that we have shared over our many years together.*

I have gotten more and more comfortable over the past year with being misunderstood. I am confident that I understand my life better than anyone else does. I have learned to trust both my feelings and my desires. I have learned that my gut feeling is the most reliable indicator I have of what is true for ME. I have learned that some of the voices in my 

head are not actually mine. Imagine that.

I KNOW that I am not a runner. 

I KNOW that I gave all that I had to give.

And then some.

And I also KNOW that when it was time to leave the party I stayed even longer just to be sure. I KNOW that my desire for the dream of my life to work out as my younger self had planned and envisioned was greater than my ability to see 

what the truth actually was. I KNOW that circumstances beyond my control forced me to make an impossible decision. I KNOW that nobody but me knows the layers and layers of heartbreak and decision making that went into what they were so easily judging as running. It was not a decision that was made lightly and it was many years in the making.  

I got down to my last two percent.

I had nothing left to give.

Nothing. 

Remember calling 'Uncle' when we were kids? 

If we were arm wrestling or some other physical challenge and we were about to give up we would call Uncle. 

Meaning: I give up. 

I can't do it anymore. 

I have no more strength left in me. Uncle.

So, no.

 I did not run. 

I called Uncle. 

I finally found the courage to act on the truth.
Life created a situation that forced me into seeing what I had not wanted to see. I had known certain things to be true and secretly knew that if push ever came to shove it would be impossible to deny what the truth was. And then of course, because life is like that....push DID come to shove.
  
The status quo was no longer acceptable. 
If it wasn't going to change then I had to go. 
I know this caused confusion and hurt for others. 

I know judging me became an easy thing to do.

People that I wanted to be there for me virtually disappeared.

I felt despair, confusion, anger, sadness and loneliness.

Then, slowly but surely I started to feel joy again. 

I started to imagine new possibilities for my future.

I started to understand that peoples judgement of 

me was not about me. It was about them.
Most importantly, I stopped judging myself.

I surrounded myself with people who loved me without agenda. I found my safe place.
People who loved the authentic Kimberly,
 not just the one that worked for them. 
I began to trust the trajectory of my own life.
Somehow, all that had seemed so wrong 
started to seem all right. My tiny, baby idea that 
I would make it through started to grow.

I marked my progress by noticing that I was crying less each day. Then I noticed I would go a whole afternoon or evening without crying. Many months passed. Seasons changed.
Then it happened. 
I went an entire day with no tears. Then several days and then an entire week. Please don't get me wrong...I think crying is a miracle and I cannot imagine what the state of my physical, mental or spiritual health would be right now if I had not let the river flow through me.

 I don't feel alone or scared now.

My vulnerability became my strength.

I don't cry everyday anymore. 

I don't think death would be a relief. 

Instead of calling 'Uncle' I am calling:

 "Olly, Olly Oxen Free."

Do you remember that too? 
It is what we would call in a game of hide and seek, kick the can or capture the flag when something had changed in the game and we could come out into the open without
 fear of losing the game.

Olly, Olly Oxen Free.

I am out in the open.

I am not afraid of losing the game.

I know that I can't lose.

I know that there are no mistakes.

Only lessons.

I am not curled up in the fetal position licking my wounds 
or reiterating my sad story to anyone who will listen.

It's a Saturday morning, the sun is shining, the icicles are melting, I can smell the coffee brewing, the birds are singing and while I may not have totally found myself yet,
 I am certainly on my way.

And you know what else?
I'm feeling pretty damn brave.