I Almost Felt Like I was Actually Alive

 

 Existing vs. Being Fully Alive


  On a nice Autumn day, do you really feel the gentle, refreshing breeze as you walk down a sidewalk? If you stop at an outdoor cafe to eat lunch, do you really taste the food as you eat it? Do you sit and take-in, breathe-in all of the world around you? If someone comes walking by and says "Great day outside," do you respond with a "Yes, it's beautiful" or do you look away?

Well, I can answer "NO" to these questions, and admit that I am not fully alive. Every day of my young adult/adult life I have lived in automatic-zombie mode. Recently, I have walked outside and thought "what a beautiful morning!" And I've imagined myself frolicking across the neighborhood greeting the day and everyone I encounter. For just a few seconds, I get a glimpse of what it must be like to be fully alive. For just a few seconds...

Every time I see the Bette Davis movie, Now Voyager, I get choked up during a scene where she admits she's never felt alive. Her character in the film, Charlotte Vale, is a woman in her 30s who has lived all of her life at home, under her codependent mother's thumb. Charlotte is codependent on her mother and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, when her sister-in-law rescues her.

After spending time in a sanitarium, Charlotte is provided with a cruise to South America, courtesy of her sister-in-law. On the cruise, we immediately see the new Charlotte on the surface, wearing make-up, dressed in the latest fashions and free to be herself-- if only she can find that self inside.

Charlotte meets a man on the cruise and the two of them build a lasting bond with each other after Charlotte opens up and confesses to him that her family is dysfunctional and that she has just been released from a mental hospital. Instead of running, the man (Jerry) empathizes with Charlotte and shows her photos of his dysfunctional family. As she finishes crying, she says to him "Oh, thank you, thank you... for a few moments I almost felt like I was actually alive."

As a recovering codependent, that last line hit me right in the heart. And I asked myself "Have you ever felt fully alive?" The answer was "No." I realized then that I'd simply been existing. The last time I felt fully alive must have been before I entered First Grade in school. 

After watching that scene, I wanted to cry as easily as Charlotte did, but I wasn't graced with the tears I needed to begin my healing process. The very process that would lead me to being fully alive. Tears have only come once to me in recent years, and those tears didn't last long enough to provide true healing.

Still, I have pushed myself to grow past my shell at times, reaching out to other people on occasion. Walking, I have greeted people passing by and they almost always respond. If someone says "Good morning" to me, I respond in kind. I feel good afterwards, but I'm not able to hold on to that feeling or the comfort of possibly being alive that it offers. I always end up regressing into my outer-armor to protect myself from being hurt in any way.

I affirmed to myself today that the problem is my inner-child/inner-teenager. I am still so wounded from those years, that the adult me can't move past the protective barriers that served me years ago, but keep me dead to live today. I tell myself "There's no need to continue hiding behind the outer walls I've built. The past is gone, no one is hurting me today, and even if someone did verbally assault me, I know now that there words would really reflect the way they feel about themselves-- not about me.

I want to fully feel alive before I die. I strive for it every time I leave the house, but I can't seem to fully break free from my mental prison walls. Unfortunately, my Higher Power doesn't seem to be very helpful. I believe I have a partnership with God: I do what I can to help myself and I leave the rest to God. I feel like I'm trying to help myself by reaching out, but I don't feel the presence of Higher Power working with me.

It's frustrating, but hopefully things will gracefully move forward so I can leave the miserable world of my thoughts and fully enter the real world-- and stay there. I'd like to be able to walk on a breezy, Autumn day and fully feel the cool air. I'd like to eat my food slowly and truly taste how good it is. I'd like to be greeted by someone and greet them back well enough to begin a friendly conversation. And I'd love to talk for hours, even if I never see that person again. 

I want to shine and radiate my fully alive inner-being to the world around me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

Image
Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well. And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my mas...
Read more

Happiness is Something We Cultivate and Share

Who makes you happy? In reality, no one can make you happy. People in your life can enhance your happiness through sharing your interests. Or they can add to your frustrations by pushing your buttons. But no one can be responsible for your happiness or your misery—aside from you. One of the biggest problems for codependents is that we too often enter relationships looking for everlasting happiness. We expect that the person we choose to attach our dreams to should be responsible for making us happy. In our minds, we fantasize that he/she will be focused solely on us, will spend every waking hour with us and will do everything in his/her power to insure that we are as happy as we can possibly be. In other words, we assume this person will meet all of our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs in the same way that we plan to meet all of his/her needs. In our little dream world we will smother each other with attention and we will both drip with the honey of happiness. R...
Read more

Where There Is Kindness, There Is Goodness

Image
Author’s Note: The next few meditations will be from a retreat I directed recently called The Good News According to Disney . If you aren’t familiar with the films that are referenced, I’d suggest to take time to see them and to look for the deeper meaning within them. Many people today still live by the biblical adage “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” They actually believe that they will be at peace if they achieve revenge or restitution for any mishap that has befallen them at the hands of another. They believe they will reclaim their personal power once they have achieved their revenge, but this is impossible. Disney’s Cinderella (2015) reveals the true secret to owning one’s personal power and to retaining it no matter what we experience in life: “Have courage and be kind.” On the surface this motto looks a bit simple and wimpy. But in reality, it holds great power. That power comes from the heart of a person, or in this case Ella, who sees the world not a...
Read more

Become the Person You Want to Spend Your Life With Everyday

Image
I really don’t have to say much about the above quote. It says it all and it’s so true. We are too often taught faulty ways of thinking as children. So many of us get the wrong message at very young ages: Love is about finding the right person to love you. Looking back I realize I wasted many years trying to find that “right” person— the one who could love me into loving myself— instead of trying to BE that “right” person myself. It never occurred to me that I needed to love myself, nurture myself and accept myself enough to become the right person— the person I really needed most in my life. After all, what is my life without me? Now I know that I’m what’s been missing from my own life for years. My life is empty without me and without my spiritual Higher Power. This is true for all of us.  Once We find ourselves, become the “right” person God intended us to be, and become the person we want to spend the rest of our lives with, then we attract others into our lives who ca...
Read more