Cracked Windshield

"How can I ever trust my instincts again when it was my instincts that fell in love with someone who could hurt me so bad?"

Good question.

I fumble and stumble and fall. Sometimes completely paralyzed with a fear that I have no names for. 

I have learned to move around love.

I have learned to put it in a fancy box and give it away without expecting it in return....actually....perhaps not even that.

More an expectation that it won't be returned.

I don't know how it is I was happy with myself, my life, my home and my family and friends, while dying a little more each day inside.

Like watching a tiny crack spread across a windshield over time. I got used to looking around it, not seeing it completely. I knew it was there, and once in a while I thought I should really change that windshield....but why? 

There are so many reasons to not change a situation. It's familiar, and even though it might be uncomfortable at times, the fact that I knew what it was made it easier to handle then considering changing it. I could use so many excuses. It made my kids happy, or so I thought. It could always get better somehow. After a little while, I even had myself convinced that I didn't need to fix it at all...I mean...what was there to fix? My life was good in so many ways, full of family and friends that cracks didn't even seem to matter at all.

Yet the hurts just kept rolling in. Little things seem awfully big when they pile up. Ignoring them, pushing them aside and even excusing them is like putting duct tape over that cracked windshield. Eventually, I couldn't see a damn thing.

Yet it was my intuition, my gut, my instincts and my .... Fear?

Ah.

Yea fear. 

Sometimes fear has a funny way of looking like comfort. It takes on the shape of familiar and bonds to the idea of paralysis. 

I wonder sometimes if intuition and instinct aren't actually there to keep us from getting hurt. Instead, perhaps it is there to guide us to the knife that fits just right. The hurts that will illuminate within us where we need to grow, what needs to change and how we need to travel. It packs our bags on the journey to awakening. 

The fear is what stops us, so maybe our guts need to scream a little louder.

How do I trust my instincts?

By letting go of my fear.

How do I listen to my intuition?

By letting go of my fear.

I realized today that all the things that stop me and silence me and tie me up in little knots are the very things that are not a true part of who I am.

They are the doubts and the fears.

They are the cracks in my windshield.