A 7th Anniversary

The week before our anniversary was harsh and we ended up re-planning our trip to something small and spontaneous instead of a week long event originally on the schedule. We headed out Saturday morning needing an adventure and some city lights and some time alone. It took us all day Saturday to detox from life before we could even start to just be, try and enjoy our time, refill and escape together the rest of the weekend. Hashing out and getting real and letting emotions fly and making out and trying again. And I keep asking myself, why. Why is it so tough to just be able to enjoy each other without so much fight to make it happen. Why is everything good so hard and such a fight. Why is nothing natural or organic.

"While they all fell in love with her smile, she waited for those who would fall in love with her scars."

Until I Tower Over it The Victor

I grew up dominated by fear. With fear. I was taught to fear. Fear everything. Fear was eaten and inhaled around me. Fear of other people. Fear of myself. Fear of the world. Fear of things. Fear of events. Fear of past. Fear of the future. Fear of the present. Fear of adults. Fear of sin. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear of doing the right thing. Fear of doing the wrong thing. Fear of man. Fear of woman. Fear of God. Fear of the devil. I didn't know what it was not to fear. I didn't know fearless was even a thing. Fear was a state of being I was always in and I would have never known how to get out looking back on it. No peace. No hope. No light. Doing whatever it took to survive the life I was in.

Fearless would seem like one of those words you would say that never got taken into action. Something someone would throw out purposefully or put into a quote or say they were going to be but it is to never really actually achieved. It's like this big impossible scary word hanging overhead you are supposed to somehow get up too. 

I don't believe that about the word fearless anymore... 

And I know what changed it. I know what started me breathing again slowly. The day I realized that fear is a state of being and mind that I can actually take control of. I can not control feeling fear but I can control what I do when the fear comes. I do not believe that fear is put here to control us. I do not believe that love casts out fear. I do not believe that we were made to fear ourselves. To fear our hearts. I know I was taught wrong. Fear is the thing that makes your heart pound and your palms go sweaty. But courage to move one foot in front of the other towards that fear has been the only thing to begin helping me break the walls of fear the once dominated my life down. 

The moment I took the tiny step towards healing. The moments I finally started questioning and finding for myself. The moment I asked for help. The moments I went to therapy. The moments I sat down with others and relived the stories I tried for so many years to bury. The moments I took of my blinders. The moments I started facing the demons. The moments I stood up and faced the truth. The moments I started to speak the truth through trembling lips and with shaking hands. The moments those trembling lips began to steady and my eyes no longer darted away in pain and shame. The moments I sat in the dark barely able to breath from the pain in chest and the tears staining my face but I "went there" and faced the pain I was feeling anyways. The moment I was willing to stand in court and face down the ones who once completely controlled my bright eyed smiling face hiding the abuse behind the 'it looks appealing and good' golden cage I lived in. The moment I decided to start loving myself. The moment I opened my heart to try to start again with Sam. 

These are the moments I learned what fearless meant. Fearless doesn't mean to not fear. Fearless to me means having the courage to take that step whatever size it is despite the emotions you may feel. Fearless means you have fear but it does not control you. Fearless means you are willing to be openminded and to face down the darkest and scariest too. 

So I fear less. When those fears come I will face them down and take a step even if it's an 1/8th of inch. I will let the fear come and while it's punching me and knocking me down I will keep getting up even if it's long and slow and punching right back until it lands on the mat and I tower over it, my hands raised, my body beaten, my cheeks stained with tears, and my lips smiling; the victor. 

Fearless Sweatshirt & Warrior Key Necklace: The Giving Keys

A ship wreck or an amusement ride.

Damn it I just keep sitting down to write and just sitting.

It's not that my head is void of thoughts but rather there are so many I feel like I might combust and the things I would write down are very vulnerable and raw and pointed and I stall.
But in the words of a blogger I love, "I’m done with writing from the heart and then hitting backspace until it feels safe again."

.....

Life these last 3 weeks has been, for lack of a better more elliquate explanation, epic shit. For me it has felt like 3 weeks of clinging to the strands and slivers of good to keep from falling over the cliff of despair. Pausing to keep my cool over daily minuscule problems because of the unexpected overloads of bigger things. I've been going with the flow, not knowing how things will turn out, throwing up my hands and riding the waves. Kicking the cans and growling when I need too and crying and laughing into my pillow. Because what else can one do. I have learned I must embrace the fact that life is a storm, embrace it and know how to adjust my sails to ride it like an amusement ride instead of a ship wreck. To learn to love that storm. That storm that is my life. And my life is beautiful. My life is hard. My life is painful. My life is full of beauty and breathlessness. My life is full of ugly and shit. And I don't have my shit together. I know I never will. And I know I never want to. Because I am learning that is how one actually lives. How one lives life alive. How one grows and moves and becomes and touches and is. Because I believe this is our purpose. Our legacy. To live your life vulnerable and real. Imperfect and human. Strong. That not having your shit together and being able to admit and be okay with that IS to live alive. To grow. To be amazing.

.....

So events catchup of the last three weeks.
The boys and I were in a car wreck. I fell asleep at the wheel coming home from Oklahoma city with both boys asleep and we hit the rear end side of a slowing utility van at full speed (had my cruise set). After hours at the hospital I walked away with Sam carrying the boys with Conner having gotten 15 stitches down his forehead and Caiden and I just whiplashed, stiff as boards, bruised and swollen. (Myself from the airbag. Those things save I know but damn they can hurt.) I spent the next week trying to sleep, struggling with nightmares and holding my little guys close at night in my bed. In that week I didn't give a pigs foot about the fact I had lost my vehicle. The emotions surrounding waking up to being punched in the face with an air bag, out of control of your vehicle to coming to a stop hearing your kids screaming in terror of waking up in the middle of a car wreck, and seeing nothing but blood everywhere from your sons head wound to the scull stay ringing in your ears and playing before your eyes for awhile.

So now with insurance coming through we have started the grulling process of vehicle shopping once again. And THAT fact has finally begun to sting this week. We did this. It was one big thing that was supposed to be behind us. One thing we had checked off our list and moved on to the million other things on our list. We had waited and searched diligently for 3 months to find that vehicle and now we are back at square one this time down to one vehicle and in need of another vehicle quickly. It's been a bit for me to swallow the last couple of days. But it is giving me an chance to learn how to not punish myself when I make a mistake. To not beat myself up, and monolog in my head what a horrible thing I did falling asleep at the wheel and destroying our payed for brand new vehicle. The voices of my past come in and tries to take over; calling me names, yelling at me, lying to me, beating me down, trying to shame me. And I am giving the chance once again to take charge of it and dispute and rewrite the lies. To face being okay with what happened and that it was out of my control instead of what I could have done. It is done. It happened. This is part of that shit in life. This is the life storm. Again I can ride it like a ship wreck or ride it like an amusement ride.

And the end to the bad things now. Instead I am clinging to the good things. Like first time dentist visits that went incredible well. Brother needing hand holding, glove balloons and all.

And Sam and I having to postpone our California trip for the second time but still getting a getaway for the weekend of our anniversary in Dallas. (I will blog it soon!) Parent teacher conferences that took up a couple days last week that went incredibly well with great reports like Caiden and Conner both surpassing the benchmark for kindergarten. The weather warming up meaning I am getting to ride my motorcycle more! Muchly needed that to happen. I finally got another load of photographer equipment I am excited to begin using this next week and the warmer weather that is also bringing me the prospect of getting out and making my photo shoot aspirations come to life. Late nights talking with empowering woman and getting to take my first pole fitness class! Another check on my bucket list!

Day trips with my little guys shopping, windows down, sunshine, giggles and smoothies. Taking days here and there to spend reading and working and chilling and thinking and dreaming.

Baths to make clean puppies to run around the house. And birthday parties to wear hillbilly teeth at.

Spring break making projects begun to get completed. To movie dates with the boys. And this weekend we have a fun little getaway trip to look forward too. Ah and chocolate chip coffee ice cream. Can not forget this little joy that has been quickly disappearing from my freezer into my tummy.

These things are the things that keep me hanging on because there is so much good that happens all around me if I can stop to take note of them instead of all the bad and hard consuming everything up.