Eat, Pray & Love Myself - Part 3

I imagined I would post a ton of essays in the series, “Eat, Pray & Love Myself.” Just me and Liz Gilbert having coffee together in my mind and pouring my soul onto the page like Liz.

The truth is, I went on a trip by myself for a month and I slept for the entire first week. I never wrote a word.

I lay in my bed in a silent house. Soft, cool sheets. Warm, clean blanket. Curtains drawn. My phone on do not disturb.

No tv blasting from the other room. No sound of dishes clanking in the kitchen. No slamming doors, or footsteps in the hall.

Silence. The likes of which I had not experienced since I became a mother.

I had existed on what I call the “Fireman’s watch” 24 hours a day for 28 years. Even when I was alone at home, I was waiting for someone to need me.

No one needed me here, and no one could get to me - or me to them - because I was 1,000 miles away.

I slept, never checking the time, never checking my texts. I got up to go to the bathroom and burrowed back under the covers. I ate vegetables and hummus, fruit, chips & Cheetos… most of the time in my bed.

I did that thing that I used to do when I was a teenager. I woke up, opened my eyes for 30 seconds and then rolled over and went back to sleep. I never checked the clock.

A week later, I opened the curtains to a warm, sunny day and I was so thankful to still have three more weeks to take care of myself.

I certainly didn’t plan it this way, but I spent another week doing just one thing… reading.

I woke up every morning and made a cup of coffee with vanilla cream and sat on my cushioned lounge chair on the front porch and I read all day.

So many wonderful authors. Dr. Shefali, A Radical Awakening. Glennon Doyle, Untamed. Kathrine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist’s Guide To Losing Control. Alex Kakuyo, Perfectly Ordinary. Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist. Matthew Fray, This Is How Your Marriage Ends. Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love. (for the 3rd time)

I read until I got hungry. I made buttery, scrambled eggs and cut up fresh mangos and left the dishes in the sink. I drank ice water with fresh lime wedges with my feet up in the shade.

I learned so many things about myself from my communion with these authors. I do not believe that it was an accident that these are the books that I brought with me.

Most people would say that I am a really sweet person; except maybe a few people who I was shitty to when I was a teenager and thought the world was solely about me. When I was 23 years-old, a family tragedy taught me that life is short and that being nice all of the time was the way to live without regret and I became the person I still am today. Mostly nice, empathetic, and smiling.

Reading this particular collection of books taught me a lot about myself. I had put my wants, needs, passions and interests completely on hold to raise my kids and be a wife, and I had hurt myself in the process.

Each book illuminated a different dark, angry, raw, neglected part of me. I smiled and waved to my neighbors from the porch when they walked by, all the while thinking, “Please don’t stop to talk to me, my insides are under construction.”

My marriage is a social study on how two good people don’t necessarily make good partners. This Is How Your Marriage Ends was like reading my own diary. Matthew Fray writes that his marriage ended not from a big explosion, but bled out from 10,000 paper cuts. I would literally throw away the 7 years we spent in marriage counseling for this one book. I mailed my husband a copy of it with a note saying, “Read this while I am gone. We have a lot to talk about.” Either he will read it and agree that it is the answer to saving what crumbs are left of our marriage, or it will explain very clearly in male-written language why I can no longer settle for what we have. I have been frozen in indecision for as long as I can remember and now that the kids are gone, and with the clarity that this book has given me, I can see that living in the dead zone of not happy/not miserable is no way to live. I deserve to be treated with kind attention and loving consideration and there is a roadmap to get there.

A Radical Awakening was a flashlight on my feminist heart. We women have been groomed to be the “nice girl” from birth. Don’t be too loud, make sure everyone around you has all of their needs met before yours - if you ever even get to your needs! If you don’t, it doesn’t matter, because you have done your job for everyone else. Oh my gosh.

The shame of divorce is a socially constructed notion. Pretty much everything we do as women comes from the social construct and we don’t even realize it. People are ALLOWED to change. I am allowed to want what I want, there is no shame in that. “There comes a time in the life of a woman when she no longer fears conflict but faces it boldly like a lioness. When she guards her authenticity as fearlessly as she guards her babies and when she drops the role of savior knowing she can only save herself.”

Untamed is a feminist love-fest for me. “Something’s off about my life. I feel restless and frustrated. I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this… I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It’s crazy to long for what doesn’t even exist.”

With the guidance of these authors, I started to see parts of myself that I had been hiding. I took notes and used up an entire highlighter. I had the urge to call my best friend and tell her all of the things I was thinking about, but I didn't.

Then, I got angry.

Angry for the way society has put me in a cage. Angry for the way I put myself in a cage. Angry that I didn’t know what I didn’t know for so many years. My niceness and selflessness was replaced by rage, it was unexpected.

I had so many thoughts and feelings racing around in my head that I just had to MOVE. I didn’t think about where I was going - I just walked. If I got lost I had my phone in my pocket to navigate my way back home.

I was sick and tired of always having a plan.

I walked until my feet and brain were tired. I walked about 3 miles in every direction. My favorite were the night walks. The Florida night air is absolutely still and warm in October. It felt like I was floating through time and place. Street lights aglow, windows lit from the inside with people living lives I knew nothing about. The night walks brought me peace.

The 4th and final week of my trip, I soaked up the sun. More lime ice water and this time it was music that took me out of my body and into a place where I could just BE.

I floated on a purple air mattress in the pool… all day.

I listened to Glen Hansard - the Between Two Shores album and Once. With Glen, I mourned and cried for past loves and the fear of losing love again. I listened to a playlist I made of all late 80’s and early 90’s hair bands - Skid Row, Queensryche, Slaughter, Warrant, Winger, Motley Crue. With these guys, I remembered what it was like to be free and young and hopeful and wild.

I sprinkled in some Lizzo, Alicia Keyes, Dua Lipa, Brandi Carlile, Lenny Kravitz, Tina Turner, and Al Green,

I ended the week with two days of the To Let A Good Thing Die album by Bruno Major - not Bruno Mars - Bruno Major. It is a requiem of hope. Some albums just take you away, this one brought me home to myself.

I am back in Michigan now. With cloudy winter days, and cold dark nights.

Spending a month alone was a wonderful gift. I am still screwed up in my own special way. No miracles have happened since I’ve returned. The thing I do have, is a baseline for myself. A feeling in my own skin that is my “center.” I can no longer tolerate anything that takes me too far off from this center.