Novembers to Remember

I have been a big believer all my life of changing the outside stuff to encourage, in fact force, internal shifts. What I have learned is that you can’t. No matter what your external conditions, you can and will remain stubbornly the same person, until and unless you do the hard internal work to change.

I know. I have changed so many external things in my life...it is kind of ridiculous.

Last year this time I was in the middle of trying desperately to make a relationship work, I was changing all the external stuff in the hopes that this time, it would get me a different result. I really changed nothing on the inside, I just paid it great lip service then did the same stupid shit that I did before. The result last year was a very hard November. Very fucking hard. So hard in fact that I had to change the internal.

This November I am super grateful for last year’s very hard November. It was indeed a November to remember. Not because someone bought me a new car, but because I hit an external wall that I could no longer go around, under or over, I had to just sit there in front of it and slowly recover from the wounds caused by my stubborn inability to accept that this relationship was not meant for me. This person that I loved, did not in fact love me back, and that I had to make some very large internal changes so that I could move forward in my own life. Otherwise, I would be doomed to continue to repeat fucked up Novembers forever.

Thanks to my sponsor, she is much wiser than me and gets me better than I get myself often...she didn’t tell me that I had to internally change. She just removed all of my exit strategies so that I had no choice but to sit still: "do not start anything new, do not end anything ongoing, do not call, do not text." This is what she said to me. And for some unknown to me reason, I listened and I followed her seemingly stupid, and very difficult instruction...

Now, a year later, I can see that what she did was remove my escape hatch of action. I am a doer. I like to move the fuck on. Except in this case, my moving the fuck on was what was keeping me stuck. I did a lot of stuff, a whole bunch of action, but since what I really needed was an internal shift, all the exterior ones that I habitually made were just more ways to keep me mired in this relationship that had long ago ended.

I did not officially end the relationship - I didn’t call or text to get closure (and let’s be clear here, the only reason I didn’t was because she told me I couldn’t). Technically speaking we are still together because we never really called it off. Except that when someone you love just stops talking to you, it is so fucking over. This had happened a couple of times before, but I refused to see that as an indicator of over...instead I saw it as an opportunity to regroup and then come at this person again...and again...and again. Last year, when he stopped communicating I allowed that to sink in internally, I mean really let it sink in because all of my action was removed from me. Strategy Numero Uno, gone! Fuck that was hard.

And, strategy numero dos, start something new, was also not on my dance card (and let's be clear again that was only because she told me I couldn't). I was not allowed to find some poor unsuspecting victim to date at until I could re-engage Mr. Unavailable. I was not allowed to start anything new...FUCK! And I was not allowed to call or text anyone...so I was really totally fucked.

But what happened is that all my usual exit strategies were removed. I was put into a holding pattern for fucking months and what that allowed was for me to be still enough to do the actual internal work that I desperately needed to do.

So this November is not a fucking shitshow. This November as my favorite holiday and my birthday roll around I am not a fucking dumpster fire. I am currently laying in my bed, in a wooden house in Montana watching snow fall heavy from the sky. I am watching it fall while a fire burns brightly in my fireplace. And I am internally different more so than just my external surroundings. I am changed. Fundamentally and forever.

This year I am dating a man that is not going to treat me like shit and refuse to see me on my actual birthday and even more importantly, I am no longer the kind of woman who would put up with that kind of shitty treatment or call it love. That was not love or loving. That was some kind of fucked up trauma drama that I have way outgrown. Thank Fucking God!

So today, I am forever grateful to my AMAZING sponsor. She saved me by stopping me there in all my last November pain and showing me who I really was so that I could really, really change myself internally so that this November I am someone new. I am grown. I am a better version of myself that I like way more than I did last November. I am grateful for the year marker showing me that when you shift the internal, the external will follow. But so long as you insist that the external precede the internal, you can remain forever stuck in a narrative that keeps you always moving but never changing. And this November, I am grateful to be this new person who sits in the external and can enjoy it because my internal is completely fucking different.