Sometimes the End is the Beginning

A little over three years ago, at the age of 45, I somehow found the courage to seek help.  I was a mess. I had been a mess all my life and internally this was always something I was keenly aware of, but now it was apparent to those on the outside as well.  I didn't have any understanding of why, I never had any understanding of why I was a mess, it just always WAS. 


To those around me I always appeared to be fairly stable, productive, independent, level headed.  Inside I was in constant turmoil, weighed down by dense emotional pain, hounded by constant fear, feeling paralyzed and unable to move forward in any kind of positive way. I was existing, surviving life, but felt very very dead inside.


In the year of 2001, I was working a job I enjoyed, I owned my own home, I was in a relationship with a man I loved very much.  But I was gripped with fear and I couldn't shake it.  Not just fear, actually the worst kind of dread, impending doom. And in the middle of what seemed like a good year, I came unraveled.  I blew my job, I walked away from my relationship unexpectedly and I had a meltdown.  But being a survivor of life, I kept it all internal.  I withdrew and kept it all to myself.  It was what I had always done.  I withdrew and kept everything to myself.


I lost my job, I lost the love of my life, and I lost my home.  And then I became a child.  I moved in with my parents and stayed numb for almost 5 years.  Five years of my life was - poof - gone, lost with everything else.  No more hiding that something was very very wrong.  I had reached that bottom that everyone talks about.  But fact of the matter is, I had reached that bottom many times on the inside, this was the first time, however, that what was going on internally had finally made its way out.  And I knew that if I was going to be that ultimate survivor, I was going to need some help in finding out what was going on with me.  I was going to need to find someone who could help me find my way back up from the bottom.  I had exhausted my internal resources and I needed to find a way to trust someone.  It would be the first time in my life I would try to trust someone.  It was the best decision I ever made. It was the decision that saved my life.


And so, the day I walked into my therapist's office was the beginning of my life.  Because what I had been experiencing up to that day was not life.  It was a slow death.  And I had almost given up the ghost.  I was at the end.  And then came my beginning.