Traversing through HELL…

Dear Friends;

As so many of my loved ones’ relationships lay in shambles, I find that I am myself on the brink of change. It was too long ago that I was faced with the dilemma to stay in a relationship where I was miserably unhappy or to take on the scary unknown and allow for the possibility of something else.

Looking back I understand that what was so scary was not so much the unknown, because it also holds promise and that can be a very thrilling thing. It is the breaking of a pattern. Reaching that point where you keep making the same choices and mistakes, each time having them get bigger and bigger until that little molehill is now this giant mountain. A mountain that if left unattended to starts to landslide right into your lap with disastrous results taking place in your heart. If you do not learn the lesson, then you are destined to repeat it. And when you learn the first lesson, there is always another and another and so on.

Looking back at the choices I made. That I settled to start with… That I did what I thought that I should… That I spent so much time and effort on showing the world what I thought that they wanted to see, rather than what was really there, I can see what I did to create such a disaster in my life.

For my loved ones that are finding themselves in situations that ended up being different than what they truly believed, it is more painful to me than my own losses. They thought that they were getting the fairytale, and then they woke up into reality that was not the future they had envisioned. Shards of what remained scattered about the floor and the choices of attempting to repair the broken bits or sweep them away staring them in the face.

Yesterday, a Dear Friend of mine asked me what she should do. I asked her what she wanted. And she said that she still did not know.

“This is that point of no return. This is that place of irreversible decisions. We all get to it if we ignore or put things off long enough. The question is if you really want what you are about to loose.”

“I want it, but I don’t think I can fix things, make it work.”

“Then it won’t. If you allow for failure, then you will fail. The people who scaled Mount Everest never doubted that they would get to the top despite the lack of air. They did it because they had to. They succeeded because they knew they would. They had to. They needed the air. If you need this like you need the air, then you allow for nothing but success. You will succeed. Even if you do not have the outcome that you thought that you would, even if you hurt for a long time afterward, you will succeed. You will be okay.”

“Will I really? Be okay? Yes. Can you promise that?”

“Yes. You will be okay no matter what happens. You will hurt no matter what happens. For a long time, but, you will be okay. “

This was all said to the person I would choose without hesitation to travel through hell with time and again. We have traversed there so many times, that I know without a doubt, we would make it out to the other side. There are several people that I can say that about, I am exceptionally lucky this way, but this is the number one partner for such excursions in my life. And it hurts every time we discover that we have once again arrived in the elevator going down into the darkness.

I feel like that little guy poking his head out of that elevator wondering which level we are on, but I know that in the end, it does not make a difference. I know that sometimes we find ourselves in hell, sometimes we head right for it knowingly and other times it is the unexpected call that sends us plummeting like a rocket spinning out of control. That was yesterday. The call.

I have taken us to hell so many times that I am very willing to follow my friend there if she needs me. I will hold her hand, as she has held mine, so that she is not alone in her aloneness.

As I come full circle, I look at the future that lies just ahead of me. A picturesque vision of purple mountains with hidden meadows and meandering streams. Hillsides covered in sweet grass and heather. Air so pure that I would never want to stop breathing again. And I realize that I need this air. More than air. I need THIS air. I WANT this air. I am CHOOSING this air. Even when the winter comes and the snow falls and the trees loose their leaves, I still choose this air.

Just like I know I will always make it through hell, and that my most precious of friends will be okay, I know that I love this air. I am looking for a good pair of hiking boots, a Sherpa, and a yak. I think it is time that I move to the mountains.