Declaring my Independence

Changed my world.  I started counseling with the naive thinking that 3 months of marriage counseling and all would be well.  I was so clueless.  Six months to understand the extent of my damage.  Nothing more humbling to go to marriage counseling and finding out I was the problem.  PTSD with dissociation at an extreme level had me prisoner of my own mind.

Prisoner of my own mind

My counselor helped me declare my independence.  Declaring my independence from my past, from my fears, from years of conditioning, from repeating the same failing habits, declaring my intention of becoming who I was meant to be.  However, declaring independence is the beginning and not the end.  The fight was on.  I struggled, worked, changed, reviewed, and changed some more.  Learning my past was carved in stone but today is yet to be written. Learning the gift of fear instead of the chains of fear.  Learning to recognize the conditioning by recognize the unhealthy teaching that shaped me.  Learning that if I always do what I always did then I will always get what I always got.  I was at the beginning of 10 years of counseling and an up hill battle.  I needed to face my truth, own my past, and realistic view my behavior.  At first, my reality check bounced.  I dodged, weaved, and struggle with trying to keep things the same but wanting different results.  I was taught about my rights as a human being.  Boggled that I was raised in the land of the free with no personal understanding what that meant.  I was treated like a third class citizen in my own home.  I celebrated the 4th of July, United States declaring independence with no understanding of what that meant.  I had seen the liberty jail, I walked through Arlington Cemetery, I visited the forts where battles raged to bring the USA into being.  But for myself, I had no idea what it meant.  Today I review where my life is.  I have come along way towards freedom and independence.  In the same time, I have seen freedoms erode in this country at an alarming rate.  People trading freedoms for comfort and a wished for guaranteed happiness.  The Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it.  The early founders had a keen understanding of that difference.  July 4th is more than fireworks, which I enjoy immensely.  July 4th is a time to ponder and review what I can do to maintain that freedom that so many fought hard to obtain.