The Struggle

The problem with awareness is that it summons an urgent call to struggle. That conflict which questions those things we know against those things that sometimes creep; sometimes flash to challenge the older - often times safer perceptions of that which we have known before.

And so it was with me. As I read my books, studied the pictures; as the symbols and realities connected to those places in my heart that already knew it's truths - I struggled.

Struggled to move beyond and to stay the same. At time even, to go back. Back to that safer place where I knew the rules. Whether I liked them or not - whether those rules spoke truth or ever had - I at least had known them. Their painful familiarity had been at least comfortable in some ominous way I'd become accustomed to.

The conflicting awareness, knowledge and perceptions ruled over months that lengthened to years. The chaos had grown more subtle than in that time before the beginning and was more present some days than others. Having moved beyond the direct healing from my childhood trauma I was clearer and fresher in mind, body and spirit. Yet, the new path with its hundreds of questions held me captive while setting me free at the same time.

Each time I was faced with those realities, those proofs of how far we'd come, seen the rising statistics on the numbers of women doctors, lawyers, working independent I said, "yes, but..." The "but" hung in the air between me and the truth that only sounded like truth but somehow wasn't.

Perhaps it was the place from which I took my view of the world. The hidden women who worked and lived below the poverty level. Those who clung to relationships with men regardless of how hard or often they got beaten. Regardless of hard or often these men beat the children. Women who believed perpetrators of sexual abuse upon their daughters regardless of how unrelenting the horror stories their daughters told.

Women who stayed, sacrificing their minds, bodies and even souls in the process because being with a man regardless of the price in flesh or spirit was the only way to survive. Middle and upper class women who stayed 'for the sake of the children' or 'the home and food' they knew they couldn't provide alone. Women who for all the appearance of freedom and equality remain dependent - at times imprisoned by the rules we live by.

I struggled personally with the vows I'd taken to live with and covet unto the man I'd married well over 20 years previous. Nineteen, a child really. What could she have known about a commitment that spanned a lifetime? How could she have known that after 23 years of journey she would not be the same person? Believe the same? Want or need the same? How could she have known that she would wake up one day and know that she had things to do? A destiny to meet. And how could she have known that he, the one she'd promised her life to would stay the same? That they would neither lead nor follow the other to the new realms she would discover?

I tried to stay in that place I'd promised to remain. Tried to only accept parts of what I came to know. The parts that would allow me to remain ever faithful - ever shackled to a vow that would keep me in good stead with my family, my friends, my society.

But, awareness didn't disappear and once acknowledged it didn't submit easily to half truths or lip service. So I watched myself leave that place. Slowly at first, guarded and unsure. I watched as I moved a flat straight path with desert sands beneath my feet. It was baron; not waste land for it had purpose too; just very flat and very empty, but something was ahead of me, something there in the distance. Something I couldn't yet see as the others dogged me from behind. I felt them pulling. Trying to keep my attention from the other side of the desert stretched out before me.

I almost stopped, almost looked back, perhaps at that point if I had I could still have returned. I'll never know because I didn't turn back. I whispered to them while moving toward the other side with ginger steps. I whispered to them that they were fine, that I would be back and that they would recognize me even if I were not exactly the same. I begged them to hush their cries, their pleas for me to stay where I'd always been. Tried to assure them that they were safe and well, to step a bit onto their own paths and explore who they were to become.

Then finally when they would not stop and their cries became screams that hurt my ears and burned my heart I stepped up my pace. They wanted parts of me that were not for them to own. They wanted parts that belonged to me, to my Lady, to destiny and purpose. I remembered a line from a book where at the end a woman walked off into the ocean to drown herself saying, "I would gladly die for you if you needed it, but you cannot have my life." Suicide the only perceived option for women to be free. But, I had things to do and suicide was not an option. So I assured them as best they would allow and watched as the rocky mountain rose up in the distance.

The terrain changed under my feet. The sand transformed to stone, not smooth or seemingly well traveled but elevated and spiraled ever upward. I reached a point where it narrowed and twisted so I couldn't see around the next bend. I tried to look beyond the bend, to see what might lie there after it, but all was blocked from my view. All except the narrow path cut between the heavy rock.

I turned to look back. The path behind had fallen away. I stood facing the void of a past no longer an option, it just was not there anymore. I stood instead on the edge of a ragged flat of stone. My choices: to step off in an attempt to return to the place I had been, to stand still, not move for fear of falling or turn back toward the bend and proceed with the climb.

-Betsy-

Back to the Journey Through Chaos