Dangerously there were two words that I started 2023 with.
It was as if, they were the words that were about to shape my life, weirdly.
One of the words I wrote about, a little bit. The other I didnt.
I wasn’t a bit fan of ‘manifesting’ or ‘goal setting’, for a mixture of reasons, one felt too charismatic and dare I say it, American, the other I realise now was because of inbuilt depression.
Want to know what the two words were?
(I guess thats the point of this piece)
One of the words was Happy.
The Other was Surrender.
And… little did I know what was about to happen in the year.
Because, I started the year in quite a good place.
But it sort of felt just a bit fragile, I was having happy moments. I was having moments of ‘overcoming stuff’ that in the day to day I was enjoying the bliss of this, the wash of self love, and also beginning to feel a bit more me, and a bit more confident.
Yet, the early confidence of 2023 was fragile. I could tell. It wasn’t matched with self belief, it wasn’t matched with a sense of inner wholeness, it wasn’t confident.
As I said, the words were Happy, and Surrender.
From April until August 2023. I crashed.
Big time crashed.
I had fought a fight and lost badly, and the inner voices returned.
And it felt so so dark.
Had I gone too soon with trying to be Happy?
No.
Did I have more healing to do?
Yes
Was the universe shaking it all up so that I could Heal even more?
Oh fuck yes.
Was it hard. Absolutely.
As bleak and as dark as anything before. As anything since I was 9. The year I had to shut out the voices.
But now I heard them again.
Happy and Surrender.
really?
Happy and Surrender.
Surrender and Happy.
It’s so hard to explain now, but the spiralling fall that was taking place was debilitating.
Happiness felt like an unachievable illusion
Surrender felt like falling, failing, giving up.
I was treading water with lead bricks attached by ropes to my feet.
Walking a tightrope that was on fire
Bleak, Dark, humiliation and all the feelings. All of them.
And yet.
And yet, I also realised at the time, with gritted teeth, that the voices, the inner peril was being revealed to me so that I had no choice but to deal with it.
No choice.
After 6 months of not really writing to myself, I re started journalling again, when I say journalling, I mean writing out the rage, the hurt, the anger, the pain, the feelings of humiliation, little James’ pain. This was the beginning of starting to write to little James, writing that tentatively started to shape the book im writing.
I had to ask for help.
I had to accept, surrender even, that I needed help.
Everything was triggering me. Everything.
I could tell how self absorbed I was in my own damaged head. In my own woundedness.
Help arrived in a number of ways.
Yes, professional help in terms of beginning therapy again. But also finding a safe space to write and give myself distance from the places that felt unsafe or too draining.
The raw path of vulnerability opened up the beautiful. I noticed the gifts of the universe in response. I began to feel held.
Happy and Surrender.
Strength from surprising places, notably from within. One Vulnerable step at a time.
Some of the breakthroughs might warrant a whole piece on them.
At that wasn’t really the point of this piece, the point was that 15 months ago there were two words that seemed to be announcing themselves to me at the beginning of the year. Happy and Surrender.
And the relationship between the two, in my healing process in the last 15 months is quite astonishing.
Surrendering to the darkness did not mean giving in, giving up, or believing the voices, even if they were loud and I felt terrified, small and humiliated.
Surrendering meant accepting that those inner voices were the consequence of pain and a damaged wounded childhood and I needed again to love those wounded parts, listen, and be open to whatever the path might be, navigating through them.
Surrendering to the path through the darkness and slowly but surely holding myself in love as the path was being walked on slow step by slow step. A path of self-compassion and warmth as the anti-dote to self hatred, blame and criticism.
Happiness was a risk. It still feels like a risk, a tender shoot to love and care for.
A new toy to protect.
Easier to talk about pain, shame and darkness – that isn’t going to be stolen.
Happiness is fragile. Happiness feels conditional. Happiness requires surrender.
Because, after all, what was the point? What was the point of wanting to be whole, healed and better? Just to exist and survive? Just to write about it and get the views? Just to stay stuck in it?
I dont think so.
Happiness and Surrender – what did I need to surrender to, in order for there to be inner happiness in my heart, soul and mind?
A happy mind? imagine that… not an over thinking, over sensitive, triggered one.
And, 4 months since the end of regular therapy. 9 months of the slow step by step inner healing process (of this phase of it).
Whisper it quietly, or shout it from the rooftops, a deep sense of Happiness, of Joy even, has found me, a kind of clarity and strength and peace in heart, soul and mind, that hasn’t been my life experience ever. It’s weird, so so weird, but incredible all the same.
Happiness and Surrender… You dont always get what you wish for, at least not in the ways you might expect, but sometimes the universe, the loving mystery of the universe has it, and it has you too.
James Ballantyne 