There was no hoopla, no screams, no shouting, I just walked away.
No one chased me, they knew done when they saw done.
I had allowed them to imprison me, showed them how to manipulate me, to believe I would never make it on the "outside".
Last night in a discussion with someone it dawned on me that it was exactly two years since I had made my escape.
It is ironic that the countless hours I spent finding a way out within myself took place in a location that has been front and center in the news this week.
Walking the shore of Sullivans Island gave me what I needed to escape MY self made prison. It was a comfortable life I had, no mansions, no oceanfront property, I would drive five miles to get to Sullivans Island, Station 25 was one of my favorites, but my living quarters were comfortable and above average.
It was still prison though.
My prison had been a miserable place to exist for a long time, really from the start. I was the one that had chosen to trade belief in myself for security. The things one is willing to turn a blind eye, and ear, to in order to fit into societies norms of success, and appearance, is imprisoning.
No, there were no walls or bars, leaving an institution of that type would have been a more defined transition.
Leaving the institution of marriage was incomprehensible to me at one time. Not leaving almost killed me.
Sullivans Island is where I found my spirit again. I walked miles, collected shells. The shells held the magic, the broken whelks, for I would look at them and see the ones that had at one time protected, and nourished, life. The purpose for the washed up, and battered whelk had long ended. I could identify with that. My children were grown, it was now my job to let go and not protect them. The whelk had been controlled by the flow of the ocean currents, tides, and waves. Eventually after being beaten, and battered, by the surf the whelk would wash up on shore. It finally had landed, and was no longer controlled by the ocean. For so long I had been washed along in the sea of life. Making choices out of fear, out of a lack of belief in myself. At that moment I knew that it was only me that could get out of the ebb and flow of the patterns that kept me tossed and in turmoil, like an angry sea.
A complete whelk, fully intact, is beautiful, and I found many. A busted up whelk is a stunning miracle of nature, I found hundreds and kept every one of them.
What the whelks taught me is that even tossed, and battered, they had survived. They weren't physically perfect any longer. The gift of flawless beauty based on its outer appearance had been stripped away from the whelk. There is a unique scroll inside each one, radiating different colors given how the light reflects on it. The insides have been smoothed and polished by the journey through the sand and sea.
Most people pass them by, toss them aside, because less than perfect doesn't warrant taking a look at what the true beauty is when you look closely at the make up of a whelk.
A handful of these whelks were my companions on a day like this on Sullivans Island
That day I was terribly depressed, and distraught. I saw no way out and the surf you see above I seriously considered swimming into.
Words and indifference can beat you and batter you worse than any fists ever could. My spirit was bruised, battered, and I believed broken forever.
As I turned the whelks over in my hand and examined their inner beauty, and felt the perfect smoothness that time and rough seas had created, I knew I was a whelk. Strong, imperfect, but a survivor, and beautiful inside.
I knew then what that I was breaking free.
The details are not important here, what is important is that I found I don't need money, or financial security. Life sucks some days. I get scared. Never planned to be alone at this age, don't want to spend the rest of my life alone, but I'll stay that way before I'll ever lose me again.
What used to comfortably furnish a three bedroom home has been thinned out considerably and furnishes a tiny one bedroom apartment, but it's mine.
I am not selling my soul and letting anyone snuff out my spirit on an hourly basis anymore.
Two years has gone by quickly, a lot has happened. I know the best of my life is ahead of me, waiting for me, I have already begun to claim a lot of it.
What I already have is better than anything I could have predicted two years ago.
Flying free is good.