To Release is to Grieve

Two years.
Two years I have let myself fall into the shadows of disrepair.  I allowed the feelings and the thoughts of, resentment, disappointment, heart ache, anger, general malaise grow and fester within my heart. Hopelessness, loneliness and discontent enveloped and wrapped their arms around me. I hadn't felt that way in a long time. So why now? Probably because I find myself back in the thick of a similar forest, but with different trees.
Also, to grieve. It is a grieving process. All realization and release is. When we are letting go of the emotional hands we hang onto for false safety, we grieve for what we once thought were the arms of safety. It's like carrying on with a toxic friend just so you don't have to be alone. I had to allow myself to let go of all the hopes, dreams and expectations of what I wanted my family life, my marriage, and most importantly myself, to look like, because I wasn't sure what I even wanted it to feel like. I did know that I didn't want to feel like this. Lost and stuck, frustrated and lonely, defeated and resigned. Watching the home become the house. The sense of rejuvenation and sanctuary upon returning at the end of the day, have turned into the mornings of relief to be heading out. I had to take accountability for my part in the process, but I had to quit harboring the actions and choices of everyone else. I can only work on myself, but sacrificing my own well being for the sake of not stirring someone else's demons? Not anymore. 
Growth and realization is a heart wrenching experience. It's not all flowers and bird songs.  In the process of awakening to my own self worth, discovering my own power and light and letting that come forward, all the other crap came forward as well. 
Elevating and widening my own growth and understanding, had me revisiting points in my past to yield deeper lessons, and habitual patterns. Patterns of blame, responsibility, blame, responsibility. Knowing that being in a place of blame only takes away my power, I had flipped to other end. I blame(d) myself for everything. Taking responsibility for your life reclaims your power, right? Yes, until you take responsibility for everyone else too. I began taking the blame upon myself for the (in)actions of others. It's all my fault. If only I had been more open, more understanding, have more patience, less wanting, less independent, less visionary, less optimistic and more realistic. What is wrong with me? Why can't I just be satisfied with 'it could be worse', instead of seeing and craving and inviting what I need and the potential of what that could be. Somewhere I thought that taking blame equated taking responsibility.
And that is where the dance of continuing my own growth and trying to supporting another who is unwilling, comes in. I know it is not my job nor my place to shape someone into my vision of them. I know I can lead a horse to water, but I can't make them drink. I know that it is no less courageous to stay on the same hamster wheel as it is to jump off. I know we all have our own divine timing. That's not so much the problem. How does a river continue to flow when two sticks are added the dam for every one that is removed? I've spent years  placing wood into a fireplace trying to keep a house warm, while the doors kept being left open. How do I keep myself warm now that the wood shed is empty and the embers have lost their glow? 
Perhaps the heat never really came from the fireplace. Maybe it has always been that effervescent voice that breathed into me an optimism and vision of hearth that warmed me. An image that has always required that I see myself beyond that which feeds the flame, but as the flame itself......