I have found that this question relevant to the discovery of a true self. There is something about story and whether or not we are attached to a story that we create.
One thing that turned me around from my misery to awakening a few years ago was like this:
I was putting all my focus in the relationship for five miserable years. What kept me going was false hope. I kept telling myself things would get better. He just needed more time. So I kept trying, thinking what to say, what to do, thinking what he was thinking, thinking what worked for him.
I also made sure I was worthwhile so I took care of my appearance, talked a certain way, read certain magazines....I am also very strong professionally....all the right things of a desirable mate.
At the time, I was new in this country. Family and friends were half globe away. Besides work, I spent the rest of my time by myself. Then he came along and became the center of my universe. I still spent a lot of time alone. During holidays, when people BBQing, have family dinner, go on family trips...I was all by myself. He would be the one that take me out of my lonely life. I just had to succeed in this. I was just head over heel about him.
In 1999, my home country suffered a strong earthquake in which five thousand people perished and the house where my parents and my brother lived was half destroyed. In 2000, after the hardship of rebuilding and starting new, my father passed away. I felt a big part of me being taken away and was now even more alone in this world.
After five years of trying too hard, completely put myself in there, and high hope, finally I was simply told that he had moved in with another girl. What? I still had so much to prove to him and I thought things were going well.....
And I realized that there is nothing more I can try or do.
All of a sudden, time seemed stopped. It felt as if I was in a bubble, a bubble of misery that would not go away. All of a sudden I lost all of my joy, all drama, all hopes, and all of my self-identity, It was death. I was so busy trying so many things all the time for so many years. But now there was nothing more I could do. I stopped doing anything. I was left with nothing to do, but a broken heart.
I still remember the dread that came with the daybreak every morning. I would think to myself: "another daybreak without him", and then tremendous sadness, pain, anger, shame would come over me. Although I managed to still go to work and put on a strong face, deep inside I was weeping, broken-hearted. and screaming for help.
Before the final straw, I had already been miserable for 6 months when I started to see things going bad. This is a long suffering that lasted another 6 months after it ended.
I have always had very difficult time breaking up with relationships. This time was particularly hard because I had no one to turn to but myself in this brand new country. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. I was left to no one but myself to face this crisis.
One day, while I was on the floor mourning the loss, crying, agonizing, it occurred to me that only he and I were the only ones that these stories matter. All those sweet memory, all the drama, and all the struggles we went through. What a life. And how strange it is now that all of a sudden, it all went away.
In this total misery and despair, there seems to be two different aspects. (I tried many times to write this part, but this is not easy to explain)
The first thing is the process of surrendering. I had given my all. I had nothing more I can do. I could go no further. I gave up. I am just a complete failure. It’s time to give up. I have tried so hard. I have done everything I could have done. There was nothing more I can do. I just need to stop kicking, screaming, or brainstorming to get him back. It was the false hope that kept me so busy for so many years that got me into this deep despair.My logical mind knew that this is the end, but my whole body and emotion and being were still kicking and screaming, dreading to face the hard times ahead. I had to gather all my broken pieces, with a broken me who can hardly go on in my own existance one more day. Even with the willingness of acceptance, I am still suffering. Something else is still hanging on.
Then came the second aspect. I asked myself: " This is just total hell. Why would you latch on to hell and can't let go? He doesn't even want you. So what still keep you in this struggle?" Then I realized that it is the shame, the shame for all the effort I had put in, the shame for the hope that maybe I can try one more time and he and I will be talking again, the shame that my identity had now totally lost, the shame that my five years of hopeful story has just ended, the shame that this sticky attachment, although so painful, yet making up of my whole being, would now need to be destroyed. There needs to be the process of detachment, so that I can totally accept and surrender.
I was willing to accept most of the facts---that there is no more things I can do even though I still have so many things I wanted to prove to him, that my worst nightmare had just happened to me, that I am now totally alone, and that I am a unloved, unwanted failure. I realized that the last aspect making me going toward total surrendering was the realization that because no one in the wold wild world (this part is so hard to put to words, yet this is the biggest power that propel me to total acceptance) even care or know about this story, and he certainly does not care, I would be the only person facing this story. Now I look back. This is the detachment that made me realize that I actually have the power, and only I have the power, to change the whole thing. It is all in me, but no one else.
That would mean that I can decide how these stories matter. I can make it miserable or I can make it a past memory. I can just be an observer.
This realization is the turning point. From that moment on, I could feel that the tense dread in my body went away, along with the attachment, what ifs, false hope, struggles, stories, and self-identity. I had been resisting the loss. But once I detach my identity and my story, I came to the start of total surrendering.
This is not only intellectual or logical understanding though. This surrendering goes deeper inside of all aspect of myself. How this goes from intellectual understanding into deeper emotional, spiritual, and soul level is a mystery. I do not know how to explain it, but I felt this realization flooding all over my body.
It was a painful, scary, and lonely process of death—extremely painful, very slow, as if being stripping off layers and layers of skins. There were a lot of weeping, memory flash backs, relapses and resistance of false hopes, anger, grief, regrets, shame, pain, forgiveness, doubt…. All these went in cycles and repeated again and again.
Every day in every moment, I had to keep saying to myself " I am with the truth. I am with the truth," meaning that I can only be with the reality. I can only embrace the reality, and nothing else. This affirmation gave me tremendous empowerment. I could feel that my chaotic body sensation got calmer and calmer every time I repeat the above phrase. At the same time, I also started to feel something inside my body forming and gathered in my belly area. I just longed for sitting down and get connected with it. My body felt light, and something just made me want to go inward, as if I was a fountain of water flowing into my own self in the core. Everything in life had just all died off for me. However, the inside of my body seemed to start to come alive.
The despair in this real life also made me long for another world, the spirit world where my father resides. It was comforting knowing that this miserable world is not it. There is another world with angels, gods, my father, and spirits. I taped the show “Beyond” every day and watched it on weekends. This is a show where a medium contacted the other side to give messages to their living love ones. Watching it was like a healing session to me every time.
Bedtime before falling asleep was another hard time when everything came back. I had to listen to radios to distract myself. A show that helped me tremendously was “Troubleshooter”, a show that consumers called in to complain about all kinds of problems about contractors, purchases, products, and services. The host would listen to their problems and gave advises how to go about getting back. He would even call the business or authorities trying to resolve the issues for the callers. Listening to these problem solving was so comforting and helpful to me. I am not the only one in the world having problems. Everyone has some problems. It’s also so good to hear that someone is helping others.
With each passing day, the light seemed to be a little brighter and me a little lighter inside and out.
I walked around with this substance in my belly for two months, until finally I sat down to start my intense daily meditation, and then the discovery and the connecting of the inner self.
Story is just story. Story is not us. Often times, we are so into the role playing that we believe the role, relationship, and stories is the totality of us. They define our emotions, feelings, identity, until we forget about who we really are inside. This attachment fools us into thinking, act, believe as if this is all there is. Our inner self is buried deep within, beneath all these attachment.
Our story matter to us in that we need to be the observer of our stories, and not be in it, and not to be attached to it.
Stories dress us up. Without the layers of dresses/stories, what’s the difference between you and me? Without the layers of dresses/stories, what’s the difference b/t me and my cat? Why do we need other’s stories to wake us?
Other’s story inspire us, but we still need to wake up from our own.
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