All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [138]
Living with you has been torture. My resiliency has tried with poignant courage to kick your ass out of my body, and such wholesome tactics, craving a cup of tea to set the tone for my day, another person’s love to refute your antic in my soul.
It was said here at Shades you were my first love. What a peculiar thought. You did isolate me, like a greedy lover, you distracted, soothed, and absorbed me totally. How very odd.
But all that is over now. I have a husband, a Dad, and a Pop. They aren’t perfect, but they’re mine, and I’ve learned I can be mad at people and still love them—that was perhaps the sharpest double-edged sword of all your lies. I needed to protect myself, but I also needed to trust. You kept me from doing that. You had me convinced that anger excluded love, both in me and in others.
Which has been worse? Assuming what I’d received was tainted and fraudulent, or not giving at all, especially to my mother?
But now I have a plan, and I have other thoughts with which to replace you. Where you once took up residence, affirmations now live. Where you fed my tissue and cells and immune system with toxic messages of self-hatred, self-acceptance now ripples and shines. Where you dropped heavy stones in my heart or put the elephant on my chest, I now have the gentle presence of God as I surrender.
Where you told me I was worthless and unlovable and that all was hopeless, I have recovery and Steps and fellowship. Where you told me there was hatred and dysfunction, there are miracles and reconciliation.
Where I once had only you, my beloved friend, I now have Hope. And so to you, loyal depression, I bid farewell. Rest in peace.
I do not give you permission to move on. I do not send you to another being. I bid you transform, composted by Mother Earth, dispersed by the universe, energy neither created nor destroyed, but transformed from negative to positive, shadow into light. I harness the energy, the lesson, the benefits of the journey, to the betterment of all and the harm of none.
I am free.
In the Dallas airport, I bought a large hot cup of jasmine tea and savored every sip. I held my cell phone and giggled while sending texts, laughing equally at how very little I had missed while secluded from the world. I accepted without bargaining my business class seat, and felt my Higher Power reward me for accepting life on life’s terms when I was upgraded to first class without having asked. On Dario’s bus, I sprawled legs out and arms akimbo on the bed, an enormous smile on my face, feeling free, joyful, empowered.
“What’s that yoga pose called?” he asked, amused by me.
“Goddess,” I said without missing a beat.
I taped a Shades of Hope pass to the wall on my side of the bed, on which I wrote out permission to myself to sleep late for the first time in forty-eight days. Near the racetrack where Dario was competing that weekend, I found a dilapidated but wonderfully cheerful old clubhouse where recovering folks gathered, and I visited with them every day, enjoying my new cohorts enormously. I practiced making “reach out” phone calls and bringing into my daily life (and especially my relationships) the solution, the practical plan of action, and the spiritual principles I had been taught.
Back at home, I was grateful to see the redbud trees were still in bloom, I hadn’t missed the dogwoods, and plenty of my daffodils were still showing their happy yellow trumpets. I happily reunited with our animals, whom I had not even missed, so focused on and committed to the task at hand had I been, and I settled into my beautiful new way of life. Soon, I was ready to reengage with the wider world and what gave my life such purpose and meaning: service work.