Ripples In Time

This day ripples through time for me. 10 years ago I was slipping a syringe loaded with crystal meth into my arm for the last time. I was dancing around someone I cared about greatly but was way too fucked up to show up for. I was getting ripped off, I was getting my heart broken. I was spinning around my apartment after scaring the hell out of my mother, after finally revealing myself, in the flesh, for the character whom I was portraying at the time, the junkie. I was a beautiful wreck.

In a slow and steady decline over about seven years, I had invited meth to meld with my mind and body. Together we had, systematically, destroyed the fabric of my life, leaving only the barest of tattered threads to retrieve.  I had bonded with The Crystal in a way that I was not capable of bonding with another human being. She became my comforter, my friend while simultaneously turning me into my own worst enemy, the manifest living monster from in my own head.

The walls of my homes had crumbled around me, friendships that had been years in the forging lost in a haze of distorted time and perception. Marriage and motherhood retreated to some far away place in my brain that reminded me of when I could actually care about something other than the cold rush of crystal warming my veins, pumping my heart, spinning my brain. Distant memories like faded photographs that I would occasionally take out and finger longingly, attempting to project myself back into them, but always waking to find myself alone and empty.

That Was Then This now.

Today, 10 years later, I awaken in my bed, the love of my life gently nibbling on my feet. The comfort of Pugs snoring and rooting in the covers, softly snuggling, warm affection. My darling daughter, a fine young lady, resting in her bed, in her room in our home.

I have crossed oceans of time to find myself and in the rediscovery of all that I hold Sacred, I have awakened my courage, intelligence and deep abiding compassion for my own shortcomings and the state of human conditioning. I would not trade a moment of my life. I am far from perfect, and I would not want the burden, in fact, I frequently remind myself to shed the need to aim to be such. I am, however, unrelentingly happy. Life is good, yes, beyond good, blessed I would say but this is not why I am happy. My happiness is my choice, I make it every day.

Today I will prep for an upcoming event at which I will be speaking, an event about waking the Divine Feminine how fitting, how delightful.  Becoming the Woman I Am is my greatest accomplishment.  I am a teacher and student, a healer, one once who believed herself broken, who has remembered her wholeness. If there is anything that I have learned to the core of my being, it is that the choices of yesterday do not need to shape our tomorrow, not when we have the power to choose something new, not in a world full of infinite possibilities, not when there is Grace. We can remake ourselves. I have remade myself. It begins with forgiveness. I forgive myself of all those mistakes, of missing the mark, of living disappointment. I forgive myself of all the unkindness visited upon myself and others, I forgive myself of not knowing or being able to do better, until…I could, can and do!

I choose life and in doing so, it becomes the life of my choosing. I choose love and I love what I am choosing!

Today, I feel powerful, inspired and most importantly, to me, responsible. I know that I am responsible for my life and that knowledge is a universe of resources that nourish me, from which I draw and share. I am naked, free, there is no greater joy than being me!

Justice Bartlett
embodyme.org