My book club is reading “The Untethered Soul” by Mark Singer.  I have seen him on OWN, on Super Soul Sunday and liked him.  I just started the book, but he begins by talking about the voice in our heads.

He asks why we  discuss with ourselves, in our heads, situations and things that we know.  I thought about how I keep re-running the chaos that ended the relationship with Scott, and replaying it in my head.  Why??  do I do that to myself?

I know what it was, I know how it hurt, but I’ll never really get past it if I keep re-living it in my head, or here on the page.  I know what happened, I know how I loved him, I know all the red flags that I ignored, I know what he did to me, to her.  I know how he is now, there’s nothing that needs to be figured out.

I would like to shut that conversation down permanently.  I don’t want to forget, I just don’t want to be obsessing about it.  It was traumatic, yes.  At my age, I’d never experienced it before, and was blindsided that it happened.  But I need to let it all go.  Why give all that bad news my continued attention?

Gratitude is a better place to go. This morning I woke up after a poor night’s sleep and thought about all the things I do have.  My great son, a lovely home, a lot of friends, a decent job, the real possibility of retiring and moving closer to family.  I’m grateful for our incredibly mild winter so far.  I’m grateful to have a few things I love to do passionately.

If I think about my relationship with him, I am going to be grateful that I found out I can love passionately, despite my long abusive marriage.  I honestly never thought I would when I left it.  That I chose the wrong man, is secondary to the fact that I was able to passionately love someone.

I guess a relationship that was so passionate, was probably not going to end quietly.  It was bound to go down in a huge explosion of emotion.  We were night and day, just as he said in the poem he wrote me. When we occupied the same space for a short time, there were fireworks in the sky like the blazing colors of dusk and dawn.  Sometimes it was beautiful and sometimes the display was terrifying.  Now  all the fireworks are spent and I am going to just let the memories fade, pack up my stuff and go home.

I have a lot of good years to live yet.  I don’t want to waste any more of my days trying to make sense of that chaos.  It will be an effort at first, because I think it’s a habit now.  But I’ve never been an addictive person, and I can change that.

With gratitude, and a conscious effort to extend love and compassion wherever I go.