It is sudden and severe. Something, or someone, you have always counted on as solid, a sure-bet, an ally, an ace-in-the-hole, turns on you. Betrayal.
You are incredulous. You are dumb-founded and teetery and dizzy. You are caught in a loop of replay, and what-if, and no-way all the while shaking your head and uttering, “I just can’t believe this.”
You are in shock.
“What did I miss?” you ask yourself. “Where did I go wrong? How could I have seen this coming?” You are convinced that had you spied it ahead of time, you could have controlled it or at least tweaked the outcome.
“This isn’t happening,” you decide and then the cycle starts again, because it is happening. So, you double and triple-think yourself until you are utterly tiresome and even more tired. You head-shake, blame yourself, examine each tiny detail trying to re-do, or better yet, un-do. When you are exhausted by this barrage of second guessing, you go back to shock.
Betrayal leaves a wide and empty swath, blowing through our life, laying the exposed path, and us, bare.
So you tell the betrayer to go, to leave, to move far from you, to get-gone now. You shield yourself from contact, change your daily path, hold your head high and get on with filling in the holes and spaces newly seared in to the middle of your days; you get on with healing.
But, what if your betrayer is you?
What if the betrayer is your own body?
What if your own body has failed you, let you down, broken itself, grown weak, or simply sickened in a way you least expected or most feared?
What then?
Do you kick your own broken-bag-of-bones and say, “How dare you?” Do you screech and cry and demand, “How could you?” Do you become silent, withdrawn, and punishing? Do you shut your eyes and your ears and refuse to take part in this new turn of events? Do you become depressed, scared, or so unaffected that the weight of your denial is pulling you under? Yes. And yes, and yes again. Yes to all. The work of absorbing and accepting is hard and tilty – like trying to balance a heavy tray of water glasses gone sliding south.
But, eventually we find that spot of balance, lose it, find it again, lose it. Find it.
And when we settle, we are still stuck with the same old body, damage and all. We can’t trade it in, bargain it away or redefine the agreement. We eventually come to realize that we just need to work with what we have.
All forms of healing are processes. They are multi-stepped endeavors akin to making our way, carefully and with purpose, over slippery stones, jagged edges, shallow water – the whole time carrying a tipsy tray of beverages. But, we are strong.
Let me first say this – and forgive me for the acridity of temper inherent in the following sentence: What happened to you sucks. The unfairness sucks the life-zip, the good humor, the where-with-all right out of you.
Be it sorry test results, or a hard diagnosis, or a bad injury, or the darn-lousy-luck of it all – the betrayal drainsyou. Acridity of temper in such situations is called for and understandable and downright necessary – at first.
Let me also say this: You will move through. It is not what you wanted or deserved, but it is proof positive that for all our posturing about control and choices and decisions, most things can not be puppet-pulled into place – not even by us.
You can only control how you move into the unknown.
And I know you will move into it. You will move with all the aplomb and strength-of-character you’ve always had. You will find yourself back together with your own body in a new partnership. There is work to be done – and even the moments you’ve spent reeling have been part of that work. You are already well on your way.
And, finally, let me say this: you’ll thrive and bloom again. You will. I’m sure. Take it. Consider it. Believe it.
