“You are already healed”

Someone rebutted this to me once after I explained the details of my current health journey.

As if mere words could magically make me better, I replied, “I am in the process of healing – a lifelong process, I am learning.”

I perceived his retort as lacking patience and understanding….You are already healed…be healed, already.

When I fully absorbed the reply, I thought  to myself “yes, I understand the sentiment, to put my energy forth in a positive light rather than focusing on there being something ‘wrong with me’” – Never in the history of being sick or dis-eased did it ever help anyone to focus on being so. Hanging on to every detail of a bad cold, i.e. a stuffy nose, sore throat, body aches, only makes things feel worse.

Everything is energy – we live in a vibrational world, a quantum reality; one that functions within the electromagnetic, guided and influenced by our thoughts and emotions – powerful BEings we are!

That being the case, the best thing anyone could do when not feeling well would be to center energy around feeling better, around healing.

However, just saying and thinking “I am already healed” does not undo all of the wound up energy that gets stored in our bodies (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual) throughout a lifetime.

Yes, it is vital to address the collective programming we have all experienced; that something is ‘wrong’ (imbalanced) and needs to be fixed; that our natural state is ‘not good enough’ and needs to be altered in some way; that we have to look outside of ourselves to experience healing rather than within.

So, I do agree that thinking “I am already healed” helps, in certain ways, to undo the voices and address the limiting beliefs that can so greatly impede on our own self-healing abilities – and yes, we are 100% capable of healing ourselves; we’ve just forgotten, fallen asleep, drifted away from our own divinity, our own magic.

But something has shifted.

We are waking up.

I am waking up, and this is only part of the story of my healing journey…

Earlier last year of 2021, I decided to exit stage left of an unhealthy relationship. Now initially on the surface, I did not consider this relationship to be dysfunctional; quite the opposite actually. I was madly in love, convinced I had met my match, my person. We had an instant connection with too many ‘coincidences’ to overlook. I drove home after our first date, which involved an emphatic conversation that took place over the course of 7 hours accompanied by a few beers and a joint, and contacted one of my closest friends to express my then current state of first-date-bliss:

“Who did I just meet?” not an actual question she would have the answer to.

“I’m totally speechless right now, it feels like I met my other half.”

I melted into my bed and drifted off to sleep in complete la-la land over this guy I had just met on Bumble, the first and last time I would ever use a dating app to meet my hopeful prince charming.

I’ll never forget how I felt on that first date and the several months that followed. We were head-over-heels in love, or at least that’s how it felt for me.

We got along famously. Our energy, our conversations, our body language – it all flowed together so seamlessly. During the first few months of our relationship, we would find ourselves ending the evening sprawled across the hardwood floor stretching and sharing stories of our past adventures, laughing and listening to each other intently. By November we had expressed our love for one another, and although I had reservations – (“It’s too soon to say ‘I love you.’”), I went with the flow and did my best to release any anxiety and leftover fear from previous relationships as well as programming from my childhood (I didn’t have the best role models for functional adult relationships). I was in the ’now’ and was extremely grateful that the universe had guided me to this man.

We met at the end of September 2020. I just had my birthday earlier that month and was goofing around with my siblings about the success I had with my previous partners…

At the start of 2020, I was on-again-off-again with a boyfriend of 5 years. We had gone to school together from 2nd grade to 11th and started dating after my divorce in 2016. These are stories for another time, however that relationship, although beautiful in its own way, was destructive and traumatic, and in the end I had to make the best choice for myself: independence->self-love. My creative expression and urge to heal old wounds in my body was squashed due to insecurities, which stemmed from his story and blossomed through my enabling. For the majority of that relationship, my co-dependency allowed for a lack of personal accountability as I was more focused on helping him and not serving my own needs. I was ‘selfish’ if I didn’t put him or the relationship first. How I functioned for that long (I suppose it wasn’t actually functional), I still don’t quite know. After years of holding myself back, I reached a breaking point (another story for another time) and ended things.

So, when I met this new guy at the end of 2020, I was coming back into my true Self. I figured because I had been doing some of the work and reclaiming my sense of ‘me’ that I was ready for a lifelong partner.

Not quite.

It was late December or beginning of January when I began having doubts or suspicious notions about this seemingly perfect encounter. Sometimes these intuitive feelings would show up in the form of dreams (and thankfully I have recorded all my dreams and am able to affirm my clairvoyant senses) and other times I would just have this off feeling, like I couldn’t trust him.

And yet, at the time, he hadn’t given me any reason to NOT trust him.

That’s just some old, unresolved wounds talking.

Right.

I entertained this ‘tug-of-war with’ my head, heart, and gut for about a month, a few times giving voice to my anxious and worried state because we had that kind of openness. I shared everything with him. I even told him about this dream I had where he was hiding a woman in his room.

She was larger than life, like a giant, and he was hiding her in his closet. In the dream however, he wanted me to see that he was hiding her as he didn’t even try to cover it up. I could feel his defeat – he was tired of sneaking around; the game was over and his conscience was ready to throw up the white flag.

Another dream involved us camping, with his campsite separate from mine. Tucked neatly away amongst the trees, hidden from plain sight, were several rows of red flags. Just a silly dream, right?

Odd but again, I told him everything, all these dreams, all my thoughts, all my wounds, all my secrets and my stories. He listened and always reassured me that there was nothing going on.

And I believed him.

Then there was one day in February when things shifted. I had been staying with him at his house almost full-time. Even though we had just met 4 months prior, we had already been in discussion about moving in together. We talked about getting married, having children, and traveling; how the house he was about to buy would be my home too.  I had quickly grown accustomed to this idea and started to feel comfortable embodying this sense of ‘home’ within this sacred space we were cultivating together.

He was at work that day and I had decided to do a deep clean on the house. In general, I like to clean, even though if you saw my room and my car you wouldn’t believe that to be the case.

Regardless, I was in my cleaning trance, flowing with the music and the sway of the broom, cleaning the master bathroom when I went to sweep under the sink and find a label-less bag.

What’s this bag? Not my business but an odd place for it.

What’s in the bag? Not my business but I am curious due to the placement of the bag.

What I found was not that big of a deal, some generic prescription for erectile dysfunction (ED is a common issue, especially for men that indulge in the daily drink). At that moment I realized the sensitive nature of the bag’s contents and put it back where I found it.

Again, not my business, however the unexpected discovery heightened my subconscious suspicions.

It’s nothing, not a big deal.

I continued cleaning.

A few hours later, he arrived home from work. He came in through the door with a smile on his face and greeted me with a kiss as I finished cleaning up in the kitchen.

“I’m going to go check on the garden,” he said as he set his phone on the counter and headed out the back yard.

What took place next happened in a matter of minutes, or maybe it was even seconds; time can be a trickster.

Before I could make cognitive sense of what I was doing, I had his cell phone in my hand. I knew his code because, again, we talked about everything and trusted each other.

So why was I going on his phone? I had done this previously out of paranoia but was met with understanding and reassurance. I had been lied to before by a few partners and it always involved some piece of technology.

“I have absolutely nothing to hide from you. Here’s my passcode, just tell me next time and we can go through it together.”

So why was I going on his phone without him?

My heart pounded  loudly in my chest as I typed in his code.

I’m not going to find anything.

You are just paranoid and this will make you feel better.

Oh how I wished that to be the case, although looking back now, I know that this was fate.

Open recent apps.

Tinder.

Tinder?

Tinder….

I locked the phone and set it down as quickly as I picked it up, only to pick it right back up and double, triple check what I just saw.

Recent apps.

Tinder.

Tinder messages – no responses back to anyone but messages that date all the way back….to December?

My heart stopped.

My stomach dropped.

My mind was not able to make sense of what my eyes were seeing.

But things were perfect in December, and even up until now. None of it makes sense.

In a matter of 5 or 6 minutes my whole world did a 180, double backflip, 360 twist. My heart, heart, and gut were doing some crazy tricks. The tug-of-war was now in a full on battle – no longer a dream but a full-fledged reality.

I was quite literally speechless.

After I confirmed that my eyes were indeed correct, I put the phone back down on the counter and continued cleaning the kitchen, heart still thumping wildly.

He came into the kitchen and started to tell me about his day. I listened and responded accordingly, and then he asked about mine.

Cleaning and being a homebody.

I shared with him about what I found in the bathroom and apologized for my discovery, and offered support and respected him in his process. Calm and collected, I took a seat at the kitchen table as I segued into the main event.

“Hey, so I have an odd question; why do you have Tinder on your phone?” I asked him.

His shift in body language was subtle but apparent enough for me to notice. His eyes widened ever so slightly before he responded “What, what are you talking about?”

I repeated the question in the same way, calm and collected. “Why do you have Tinder on your phone?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t have Tinder on my phone.” His hand was just barely covering his mouth as he replied, taking a seat across from me now.

“Yea you do, please don’t lie to me,” as he shook his head no. “I went on your phone, I know you have it.”

Momentary silence took over the room.

I could see a release of tension in his shoulders when he knew I knew. “I don’t know,” he started to explain, “I just put it on there today.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Ok, I downloaded it yesterday. I get bored, it’s like people watching, I find it amusing, I laugh at most of these people.” The excuses started to roll off his tongue so quickly and smoothly.

“No you didn’t ‘just download it;’ I went through the messages, I saw ones from December.”

Silence.

“Ok, I had downloaded it back then too, but it was only for a little, honestly, I’ve downloaded and deleted it a few times. It means nothing. I don’t respond to anyone. It’s like getting hit on at a bar, it feels good to get that kind of attention.”

Silence…followed by more reasons.

The emotional upset that followed, filled with pleading and begging for second chances and forgiveness, was one that I would never forget – and although forgiveness was embodied very quickly after (mind you, forgiveness is for the Self because who really wants to hang on to that destructive and toxic emotional baggage in the first place), being deceived in such a deep way was something my heart would never forget…The pain I experienced was so incredibly visceral I thought for sure I was having a heart attack, and perhaps I was. My heart was under attack; a thorn stabbed into the vulnerable flesh of my chest, straight into what eastern medicine calls the “Emperor,” the great Spirit that directs the soul. According to my acupuncturist, my Emperor was knocked straight off the throne, which created an imbalanced flow of energies, resulting in more dis-ease of the body. Hence the current path of healing that has been underway…

…Which is why I told my friend, saying I’m “healed already” wasn’t as easily done as the simple words that rolled off my tongue. I had to spend some time processing; I had to find ways to understand, let go of the story, and release the emotions. Reflecting back on the situation now, I think my heart was broken long before…this experience merely illuminated a dysfunction that was already present but long forgotten; it brought sensation back to where I went numb.  And in order to heal it, we must feel it.

In this moment I choose the path of unconditional love and acknowledge the hurt, pain, anger, and sadness that nestled its way into my heart, my sacred center of Self. And I give to this place my love and affection and choose to accept all responsibility for the journey that culminated to this point. Everything that has transpired not only needed to happen, but I created the reality for it to take place. In a sense, I manifested the events that occurred, and I trust completely that it’s all been for the highest good and greatest growth of my Spirit.

So here’s to feeling and here’s to healing.