I lost myself.

Thank you Radiohead for the simplicity.

More than once, probably a million times I have gone around the bend and not come back.

It goes farther than getting lost on a street in a strange city, drunk on anything and hung over. It’s how I never found me all at once.

Just picked up pieces and parts, put em’ in my back pocket. Here and there.

No shabam! Clap of thunder! No stunning, illuminating light, all at once showering upon me some sort of fake aura of whole perfection. No grand, magnificent, conscious knowing of my life purpose and reason for my existence.

Just the pieces and parts.

And rounding up all the shadow parts to me too. The Universe loves to illuminate those, so you just trip right over yourself.

The complexity of our journey in this life is made that way from our own expectations.

Whether it is the expectation of success, enlightenment, happiness, love, etc…we all have an idea of what “we” think the picture is supposed to look like, but there’s a whole lotta variables! And why can’t we just let the picture be whatever it is?

For me, nothing has been the easy road. Probably, because I wouldn’t have noticed. Nope, in the past I was the “get the baseball bat out kind of chick” cuz I wasn’t listening…destruction would happen upon re-construction. What a cycle!

I lost myself.

I lost my marbles.

I lost a marriage.

I lost cars.

I lost relationships and friendships.

I lost employment nine times in 10 years.

I lost my home and possessions.

I lost my pride and my ego.

I lost my keys (but I did find those eventually).

The list of loss keeps on going; there was nothing I could hold onto for a very long time—everything was fleeting. In fact, I still don’t get to hold onto shit.

And for the most part, it has made me the queen of non-attachment (even when I love deeply and brutally, I have no attachment to the outcome).

So, in essence, I was forced to let go. I was forced to lose all that wasn’t real or held the pretense of protecting me from an abyss of failure.

I failed; I destroyed my life. Not once, but too many times to count.

I thought I was awake, but there were ideas and attachments that I could not let go of holding onto as though my life depended on it!

I had to let go of so many concepts of who I thought I was to become who I am.

I had an idea with my career of what success looks like; I had an idea of what relationships were supposed to be for me. I had so many ways that I believed things were “supposed to be,” that it took years to have some concepts ripped away.

I also had the idea that I was ready almost two decades ago to embrace inner peace, obviously when I asked for it, no one prepared me for the dark night or the soul or that what doesn’t represent peace in your life will be gone.

Thankfully, nothing catastrophic happened physically to anyone I know or myself through the years, otherwise I would’ve had to dig even deeper, so deep I may not have made it out of that place.

I feel I know rock bottom really well, maybe I was just too stubborn? Or I thought I knew it all. I studied every book on every philosophy I could get my fingers on for years.

Many books said the same thing. And until it clicked on a deeper level, I could talk it, but couldn’t walk it…and the Universe took care of that, I got to crawl for a really long time.

I have more interest in experiences than I do possessions, though I still like nice things, quality is great. And money can’t buy me love, but it can give me freedom. And even if I never achieve that kind of freedom, I have freedom within myself.

As much as some days, I have conversations with the Universe that start off with, “What the hell?” or “Give me a clue!” or “F—k You!” an hour later or by the end of the day I have found the peaceful place within, and believe if I keep showing up, so will my life.

And the answers come like tiny, tiny raindrops in the desert, some evaporating before they hit the ground, giving me the faith to not struggle, but just keep moving forth on the journey.

I share with people that we are probably meant to stumble along the path, trying to figure it out as we go and re-doing it a million times in a million different ways, because we change and so does the path and what you repeat now is not quite the same as yesterday.

And to know oneself is the ultimate goal, to feel that high of being at one and at peace with all that is when it is not perfect is something I have become addicted to in my existence.

Until you learn what propels you and you make friends with it, it may drive you over and over again to the desolation of the dark night of the soul.

And then the dawning of acceptance, followed by peace. Happiness and well-being are the clothes we wear when we let go and just live.

I do what I love and figure the rest will happen, because I am actively participating in this love affair with life.

Or maybe I’ll just be the chick with the laptop in the homeless shelter.

That has been and is my journey.

Like “I’m not ‘spiritual.’ I just practice being a good person.” on Facebook.

~

Editor: Kate Bartolotta