Purgatory and Redemption

In July 2004, my world changed irrevocably.  I had no control over the the next year and a half of my life.  From the moment Charles was diagnosed until the cancer took him, I was truly powerless.  My world became a pinprick.  Everything in my life was about the cancer.  There was no room, no time, nothing for Pam.  To make it worse, Charles had surrounded himself with people who formed a "prayer circle".  These people told him he could be healed - he just needed to accept real love into his life. The inference being that the most loving, spiritual man I knew was somehow responsible for his illness because he didn't have enough love in his heart.  One of these, his ex-wife, made it her mission to try to destroy our marriage during this time.  The damage that was done to us was almost irrevocable; but Charles and I persevered, as did our love.

After Charles died, I was so shut down I didn’t realize how close to the bottom I was and by the time I realized that I was drowning, it was almost too late.  I was bereft of hope - everything of value in my life had been stolen.  There would be no husband, no children, certainly no happily ever after.  The destruction of my life and everything I knew to be good and beautiful and true seemed complete. I could not bear the thought of my life as it was - alone, empty, bleak. But unknown to me, God was not done.  God, miracles and serendipity awaited.   

It started with a simple photograph that brought my life to a screeching halt.  It was Ash Wednesday 2009.  I had not been to church in a long time, I was righteously pissed at God, but that day I was called to receive the mark of repentance - the ashy smudge of the cross on my forehead.  As I sat in the service, something began to happen.  I found myself completely emotionally and spiritually overwhelmed. Tears rolled down my face. My chest felt as if it were being crushed and then something inside me broke; the anger and sadness and hatred and sorrow that I had carried inside me for the last four years could not be bottled up for one more second.  A crack had appeared in the bottle and the blackness that was killing me began to ooze out.  I sat in the pew, weeping - my misery and sorrow the only repentance I could offer.  

After the service, I tried to collect myself to go back to work.  I began to drive back to the office, and for a reason that I still don't understand, I used my iPhone to snap a shot of my reflection in my rear view mirror. I just wanted to capture the image of the ashes on my forehead but when I looked at the photo, I was shocked. Who was the desperately unhappy person in that photo?  I didn't even recognize myself.  All the pain I had been hiding from seemed to stare out at me from that photo.  I have a thing with mirrors - not in a vain or selfish way (although that too) but mirrors have always had a preternatural role in my life. In the photo, nothing joyful or happy was reflected in my gaze - only great sadness.  A sadness that filled my eyes, my heart and every molecule of my being.  It emanated from me and was inescapable.  I kept looking at the photo, trying to understand.  I thought I had hidden it so well.  I thought I was moving forward.  But that big lie was staring me in the face.  This was the face of a girl on the brink of annihilation. The photo haunted me.  I couldn't stop examining it.  Everything in my head and my heart was churning.  The truth was staring me in the face. The feelings I had so desperately tried to hide, to run from were coursing out of that broken bottle, a black muck of uncontainable soul sickness.

This is how then, I was brought to my knees. Two weeks later, I gave it all up - the lies, the facade - I walked away from my life as I knew it.  Most people would call it a breakdown.  I call it my first step back to the land of the living. My life came to a screeching halt.  I stopped working.  I stopped everything.  I let it all go.  For two weeks, I did nothing but cry.  

When the crying stopped, I took inventory of myself. It was not a pretty picture.  I was as physically unhealthy as I had ever been in my entire life, so I resolved to change that. I started to walk Blue on the beach, it was wonderful but not very challenging.  I needed more. I needed to feel physical pain. I was reminded of a hike I had attempted with friends several months ago.  I was pathetic, out of shape, out of breath, mortified that I had let myself go so badly.  I was so embarrassed, I vowed to never hike again.  That day stayed with me, so a few weeks after I started walking on the beach, I found myself parking my car at the base of Runyon Canyon.  

I started trudging up that hill.  It was brutal.  I was sweating, fighting for my breath.  My legs and lungs screamed for me to stop, but I didn't give up, I kept going. One foot in front of the other.  Everyone blew by me.  Some people running.  I hated them.  It took me 25 minutes to get to the top of the first lookout.  Twenty five minutes of agony and I don't even know how many times I had to stop.  But I kept moving.  And then something happened.  My head stopped - the 24/7 BadPamNews cycle that filled my brain, shut off.  It was quiet in there for the first time in five years. No fear, no anger, no recriminations, no "I should haves".  Just me and the breath. By focusing on the breath, I created this space of peace, a space where there was room for God again. That day, my life began to change.  I didn't know it at the time, but I started to live again that day.

By letting go of everything, I was slowly given gifts of incalculable value.  Old friends became new again.  The commitment to living in truth and honoring the woman that I am - that God made - became my quest.  Healing my body.  Opening my heart.  Digging out the cork that bottled up the sunlight and allowing it to eradicate the darkness.  Hoping again. Finally forgiving myself.  Risking my heart.  Walking in faith and welcoming chance. Watching the sun set over the canyon.  Walking down that same canyon under the light of the full moon - seeing my moonshadow on the path before me.  Maybe it was my soul - one step ahead of me?  Finally, the day I woke up happy again; It was such a shock, I didn’t recognize it at first.  I was truly a phoenix rising from the ashes.  And today I soar still.  Blessed.  Happy.  Beautiful inside and out.  Still not sure where I am going, but open to the road ahead of me, bumps, hills, detours and all. Making peace with my loss and allowing it to make me a better, stronger, more loving woman.  I am shaped, softer, gentler, kinder, more aware of the world and my place in it.  I love and laugh freely and unabashedly…that is the best of all. I see it in my reflection when I quickly pass a window or mirror or in the light of my family and loved ones faces - I am healed.  I am free.

February 25, 2009

September 19, 2009 - six months later.