01: A Fresh Start
Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful parts of us.”
David Richo, PhD, MFT
This is the first week in a very long time, where I am not overwhelmed with feelings of shame and humiliation. I did what I did. I cannot undue it. I cannot change any of it.
Last Friday night I accepted my life as it is and stayed in the moment.
I’m at this point because I’ve begun to apply two basic principles to my life as I currently understand them:
- Radical Acceptance: “completely and totally accepting something from the depths of your soul, with your heart and your mind. You stop fighting reality. When you stop fighting you suffer less.”
- Impermanence: “all physical and mental events are not metaphysically real, that they are not constant or permanent, they come into being and dissolve.”
Everything I have written and shared is irrelevant now to the extent that it defines me. I will not run from the experience, hide or pretend. I will continue to embrace the experiences as they present themselves because pain, embraced, is not a bad thing. Pain is, as Dr. David Richo writes, “the openings into the best and most beautiful parts of us.”
I’ve been in pain most of the week but I haven’t let it run me.
Instead, I’ve accepted the pain because I see it for what it is: temporary, relative to the moment, and impermanent. In truth, as odd as this might sound, I like what pain and loss have shown me about myself: I’m resilient, powerful, patient, and capable of deep, passionate love in the face of my – and C’s – Ugly.
My betrayal, secrets, and escalating series of lies has given me the option to choose my future in a manner more closely aligned with my true self. I see I am a good man and hiding behind a fearful heart. The pain has forced me to be more vulnerable, not less, and in the process, I have uncovered a love for myself and others I didn’t know existed. It has brought me alive.
I’m grateful for the pain. “Everyone is down on pain, because they forgot something important about it,” wrote Jim Butche, “Pain is for the living. Only the dead don’t feel it.”
My pain and loss are simply the storm between me and the sun.
My life will be defined by what I do now, not what I did. The primary four people I betrayed (C, C’s twins, and K) are no longer part of my life, and almost everyone else is simply an opinionated interloper.
Throughout this experience, I have Pursued C’s forgiveness, attention, and love. All my suffering is a result of my being an unwilling to accept the past as it is and my present as I’ve made it.
I need to focus on the present and future. As such, I’ve made private almost all of my 200 posts I’ve written over the last 11 months. I’ve left most of the reposts from some of the writers and people that have taught me. Someday I may reshare them but for a while I’m going to focus on the present and future and less on what I did.
The people that care, know what I did. They didn’t run or weaponize it for sport or out of pain.
Although I may care for C deeply, passionately, and unconditionally, her healing, well-being, and pain is not my responsibility. Any obligation to her was paid a long time ago but my sense of Honor blinded me to three pieces of truth:
- We are responsible for our own healing, all I can do is hold her hand
- C doesn’t need fixing because she is not broken, she is, like all of us, conditioned to avoid pain
- Avoiding pain perpetuates pain and delays healing
Don’t misunderstand, I miss C and want her still, but I don’t need her to live a full and beautiful life. I don’t need her love or forgiveness. Actually, I need to love and forgive myself…and only I can do that for myself.
So let’s begin again.
She knows where to find me if she wants me – at the beginning. In the meantime, I’m going on ahead.
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