Triggers

Personal shit ahead. Proceed at your own risk.

So far this blog has been about my new life style and I haven't spent much time on how or why I began this journey. Some of you know the down and dirty... some of you know an overview... and some of you just put 2 and 2 together with the title and various social media posts.

I'm generally not a sharer. Not of personal things. Even with close friends I find sharing difficult. So, to keep this brief, I was in a relationship for 24 years. I thought it was forever. She didn't. I thought we were in love. Now I know she doesn't believe in that. It was a strange new reality that upended my past, present and what I thought was going to be my future.

To give some perspective, I spent the entire last week of 2019 in the deepest depression I have ever been in. I got out of bed only to feed the pets, pour another drink, and very infrequently, eat. I didn't answer the phone, watch TV, check social media, get the mail. I didn't want to do anything or see anyone. I was either drunk or passed out pretty much the entire time. That's not an easy thing to admit to anyone.... much less everyone. But it's true. I checked out.

I’m not making excuses (or maybe I am…) but I ended up there because my reality got rocked. I thought I was a good judge of character. I believed in commitment and keeping promises and I believed I was in a relationship with someone who believed that as well. But it wasn’t true. I was wrong about all of it. My belief in myself vanished. If I had that so wrong, how could I trust myself (or anyone else for that matter) ever again? It felt as if I had lived my entire adult life under one lie or another. Always fooling myself into believing it was real.

Anger got me out of that darkness. Anger got me out of bed. Anger got me up in the morning and kept me moving through my day. It did not fix what was broken. But it allowed me to continue to function. And it got me through the bullshit and to today. Today, the anger is less but its still there. And it still helps me get through the hard days which happen a lot less frequently.

So maybe, just maybe, I'm starting to make progress. It has required rebuilding myself and learning to trust myself again. It means learning to know myself and what I can do, what I can handle, emotionally, mentally and physically. It means learning to know my triggers. Which ones I can face and overcome and which ones I need to avoid because they lead down paths that are not healthy for me. It means learning what my boundaries are and being strong enough to stick to them. Even if that means some people are cut off from my life.

I’m working on living a more minimalist lifestyle. I quit my job, bought an RV and am traveling full-time in it. I’m upgrading the solar so I can be off-grid as much and as long as I like. I’m creating a blog which so many of you encouraged me to do and a website which I hope to build up to help make some small income on. We'll see about that last part...

Sometimes a trigger will still pop up, usually but not always, on social media, and I feel myself slipping again. And sometimes now, most times, I'm able to pull myself back out of it before getting too far down. I consider that progress. I have eliminated as many of those potential triggers as possible but I still find myself having to trim the social media tree on occasion. I try to think of it as a Bonsai tree.... I'm shaping it to be something healthy and beautiful.

OK, so that's enough personal sharing for one blog. This is more than most of you wanted to know but I did add the "warning" so if you continued it's on you. Rest assured these types of posts will be few and very far between and the next post will be more about my adventures. I took Thelma out for a ride before the freeze we are currently in and that is coming up in a new blog soon and I intend to dedicate a blog to Dragon as well. His fame is spreading. :)

Until then, stay strong, know your boundaries and stick to them, trim your social media tree as needed, and keep Movin' On.