Okay, so here goes something I hope.  Its been months and months since I've blogged but not a minute goes by that these thoughts in my head and feelings inside of me make burning words I wish to push out....I left him.  I picked up my kids and our important papers, and I quit my jobs. I ran through my house with a roll of trash bags and twenty good minutes to clear out.  I packed up my Yukon, and I bounced.  My babies and I went to live with family until I can get on my feet in this new city.  Hurts to say that still.  I did 8 years of loving him with the entirety of my soul.  I almost died in the oblivion that was his "love".  I moved away, I filed for divorce, and I'm starting over. I go to a domestic violence program.  I go to counseling, I have a psychiatrist. I go to peer support groups.  I am a survivor of a life I never wanted to admit that I lived.  I still feel that shame I felt while in it, that prevents me from talking about it sometimes.
  I have new problems now too.  I get panic attacks.  Anxiety is driving me crazy.  Depressed, anxious, stressed out, weepy, angry, insecure, scared shitless.  I feel like my shoulders are pinned to my ears and I'm in a constant state of stress and tension and nervousness.  I go hard on myself, mean and demanding of me.  I'm my own worst critic.  Seems like I don't need him to tell me anything, I can say it all on my own.  A broken record in my head.
  I feel like the girl in How To Love.  I am insecure.  I am terrified.  I had a lot of crooks try to steal my heart.  I wonder will anyone ever even really love me.  Is there someone out there who even knows how to?  I don't even know how to love myself.  I don't know what I deserve.  I'm not even ready to love, or look for love or anything like it, but I doubt I will know it if I saw it.  I just hate this lonely.  This feeling like I spent my life trying to fix a love that wasn't ever gonna be right and now I cant even love myself.  I can't even sit in the quiet with myself and be okay with what we talk about.  Me and I don't get along.  I don't like this feeling.  I don't like to feel.  I don't want to feel.
  So I started to run.  I felt like kicking and screaming and burning down the entire world.  I felt like lashing out and attacking anyone and everything in my path.  Total destruction, utter devastation.  Hurt like I do motherfuckers, and so on and so forth.  So I stood up out of my pity party chair, put my shoes on and ran right out of my garage and down the street.  Very Forrest Gump-ish I know right, "I just felt like run-ning".  The faster I ran, the harder my breath was drawn in and out of my lungs, the less even my inner voice was able to shit talk.  I ran until my head was quiet.  I ran until my legs were jelly.  I ran until sweat poured and my lungs burned.  Felt pretty good. Until the soreness set in the next morning.  But I took care of myself and the next time I warmed up first and stretched and all that good shit.  I got my ipod out and did it right the next time, but then I even turned it off and just ran in silence.  I never pictured me for a runner, but there I was, out there run-ning.  I told my counselor and she had a book about running as therapy.  I downloaded a couch to 5K running app on my droid.  I got out and got running.  I was like NIKE, I just did it.
  Then my counselor said, maybe I need to hear my head again for a while.  What kind of shit is that?  After 28 years, I'd finally found a safe and healthy way to make my thoughts shut the fuck up and I should not do it so much?  Wow.  I need to think, I need to feel and hear myself and learn to love me blah blah blah.  She told me to journal, to blog, to do poetry and integrate that with my running.  So this morning, my fingers are running over this keyboard instead of my feet beating the pavement to the base line of Adele's Rolling Through The Deep.  And I think I may feel a little bit better....