So I’ve said many times before that writing is my therapy, and its true. By now I know my process, and I know my routine… I know that sometimes I’ll cry if I can’t get it out, whether its here on this blog, or on the tangible old school pages of my journal. I also know when I’m avoiding something, cause I still feel the need to write, yet I just can’t bring myself to do it. If it doesn’t flow naturally, with ease, it doesn’t usually produce something worth posting, at least that’s how I feel.
Last week I was feeling some pretty heavy emotional stuff, I wrote about it on more than one occasion. I talked about it, and all of this lead to the realization that I’ve got some exploring to do where me deep dark past is concerned- I say it like that for dramatization more than anything else- its not really deep and dark, more so there’s some deep seated trauma there that I really would rather not revisit. And, therein lies the interesting bit.
Who really wants to look into the past to uncover pain?? I’m a follower of sorts of Iyanla Vanzant. A life coach backed, and made famous, by Oprah. I was turned onto her by my sister a few years back, as I was going through some stuff (you know, that super devastating, life changing -in a good way- heartbreak stuff that created this blog in the first place…), anyways, Iyanla talks about cleaning your house. The house is a metaphor for your life, and what we always come back to is the basement, our childhood traumas, the role our parent’s played and what they modelled in terms of relationships, our early experiences, and the things we bury so deep we never give a second thought to. All of these things require us to go through the process of healing; we are supposed to acknowledge, allow ourselves to sit with the pain and feel our feelings, and then to release it all by accepting it for what it is ( it happened and there’s no changing it), and forgiving ourselves, the child in us all, who did the best they could with what they knew at the time.
I spent a few days thinking about the particular events of my late adolescence/early adulthood, realizing there’s more trauma there than I care to admit. I’ve laughed it off, joked about it, or incorporated it into my “Osborne Village” identity, but the truth is, I was once a part of a world of petty crime, drug dealing and violence. I spent 6 years in that world, by choice, and now I feel the heavy burden of shame and guilt, so much so that I have to force myself to relieve it because in the aftermath of it all, I forgot everything. Call it a coping mechanism, but the moment I left that life, I suffered from amnesia.
Knowing that this is most likely the next step in finding and living my truth, I was prepared to dive in and explore, to write about it, go through the healing process… But I really didn’t want to. Thinking about it was enough, but having to feel it all, and remember it, it’s a daunting task, and the thought of it I find exhausting. I’m happy now, I’ve done some work, why bother? The truth is, the work is never done, and until we clean out our basement, there will always be skeletons there. The past has a way of reaching out, and threatens to suck us back in if left unchecked. I was buried in it for a few days, and didn’t even realize how powerful that pain could be, or how easily it could take ahold of me.
Today was my first day off in 6 days, interestingly the six day stretch coincided with all of this, and so I was too exhausted to try and write my way through my past anyways. I began writing this piece last night (around the witching hour – my fav 3am writings), and what did I do today? You guessed it, pjs all day, curled up on the couch binge watching HGTV.
Pursuit of my Truth 
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