Sabbatical
I’ve been writing this work for almost 2 years now. Other than holidays, I’ve missed one day due to sickness. I’ve tried to be as consistent as I know how to be, both in the writing, and in replying to your kind comments and questions.
It’s been a joy, a privilege, a blessing and a very humbling experience to try and bring you something of value each day, welding together words for you to ponder, and hopefully making your journey through this vale of tears just a little bit easier.
And I’ve loved every minute of it.
Writing this work has changed my life, in some very literal and powerful ways. I’ve come to understand so much more about who I am, where I am in my personal journey, and in some aspects, just how very far I have to go.
It’s challenged every belief, every preconception and every way of seeing the world that I had. I think it’s helped me grow into a better person, kinder and more compassionate than I used to be.
And I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
But I’m at a point in my life where I need to take a break for a time. I’ve been hit with a few emotional bombs over the last little while, and their combined effect has been to do something that I have been trying to make happen for a very long time, but was unable to accomplish because of the pain and trauma it would cause.
The bombs have ripped the band aid of willpower off of my deepest emotional wounds.
Which, if you’ve ever been there, is one of the most painful things you can go through. I’ve cried for the first time since my son was born 21 years ago, and diagnosed with a condition that nearly killed him in his first few hours.
He required an open-heart procedure at 6 days old to give him back a normal life, and unless you’ve been there, you can’t imagine how traumatic that experience was.
I’ve held so much together since then, carrying the earlier and deeper wounds from my childhood through that experience, and carrying those plus others picked up along the intervening years.
And I’m at a point where I need lay down my burdens, and work on healing me.
Over the last little while, I‘ve had some nights of very little sleep. I’ve walked the floor, crying while I thought, and allowed myself to feel things that I’ve kept suppressed for such a long time.
If you know me, and have seen the insane levels of willpower that I can manifest, you’ll understand how scary it is for me to say that I can’t hold it together anymore.
So I need to spend a little while going through some things that are really going to hurt, and I don’t want to drag you through it.
There’s probably going to be some pretty dark and painful days ahead, and I don’t want to put that energy out into the world.
Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t learning the lessons, finding the truths and storing up things to share through this work, (I even stopped in the middle of crying last night to note down a new concept I realized), but I need to make sure that when I share those lessons, I’m in a place that allows me to do it properly.
And right now, I’m nowhere near there, wherever that is.
I’m not abandoning this work, far from it. I hope to return in a little while and write about the deeper truths I’ve discovered through this process. I will admit that I’m a little scared about what I’m going through, but I’m hopeful that this is what I’ve needed to prepare me for the next evolution of my life, and to become the person I’m trying to be.
Because I’m either falling apart, or putting together Alan 2.0.
I think I have an idea as to how this is going to end up, but when you’re stripping away so much of a person and getting down into their foundations, you never quite know how it’s going to turn out.
I’m going to be dancing with demons that have plagued me for as long as I can remember, and the journey to salvage my soul could take me many thousands of miles into the past.
And I’ve been avoiding that for the last 23 years.
So I’m going to ask for your patience and understanding as I work through the next period of my life. I may post infrequently, or I may not post at all.
I promise you that anything I do share will be thought out, and the result of some deep introspection and understanding, shared with the intention of hopefully helping someone who may benefit from the truths that I am learning, which has been my hope and my desire all along.
But for now, this is me, signing off.
We’re all travelers through this journey called life, and right now, I need to walk alone for a while.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings