Nobody is Coming

Nobody is coming.

If there was ever a lifelong lesson for me, that would be it. During today’s afternoon meditation it hit me like a ton of bricks – what this thing is that has been burying me and shutting me down, turning me off, making me go cold, pushing me to abandon life, to abandon friends and jobs and literally everything I’ve ever done or dreamed of. It pushed tears from my eyes, then anger, then release.

I had this vivid visualization of being a young girl in modest European schoolgirl clothing waiting at the train station. It was a cool dreary grey day and the platform was outdoors overlooking rolling pastures. I stood there clutching my hands and staring down the tracks, waiting. I have been waiting a very long time. And the train never comes. I have been forgotten, or overlooked.

Nobody is coming.

The essence of this dreamlike experience pierced me with all the feelings from childhood of crying out for help in various ways – cutting myself, getting really sick quite frequently, swinging into violent outbursts occasionally, lying, toying with suicidal thoughts, defying my sense of self hoping someone would catch on to the pain and suffering I felt underneath the straight As and strong features. Hoping someone would come and rescue me.

Nobody ever came.

But I kept waiting. For 20 years. I kept trying to get someone’s attention. I continued to wait, to hope, to pray I would be held, loved, saved from myself and my pain. That someone would see underneath all of the “success” and “good looks” to the tragedy and suffering. I would lash out at the world when the disappointment crept in and then shut down completely to the human experience. All the while still thinking maybe, just maybe, someone would hear my cries.

But nobody is coming.

This is the final heartbreak and release to freedom. The acute awareness that arrived today why I have shut down, why I have lived inside hope (a four letter word), why I have pushed achievement away, why I have lost all the energy to build something great at many an opportunity. Even after I released the suffering of my family story. There’s a little girl inside of me who is still sitting at the train station waiting to be picked up and carried to a happier, brighter place where everything is perfect and joyful.

Nobody is coming.

In this way my faith has been broken most of my life. I thought if I did all this hard work, continued to achieve and succeed in the way I thought I was supposed to, that someone or something would come and magically make it all okay. Why would I have any trust if I lived on this premise most of my life, never feeling protected or nurtured?

I am staring down those tracks knowing nobody is coming. It’s time to release the anger and disappointment I feel about this lifetime and turn away from the tracks, empowered with the thought that nobody is coming. I have to use my legs to walk down the tracks to feel and enjoy the world – sun, rain, laughter, pain – not from inside a sealed car. These tracks have no trains and I’ve been waiting for one almost my entire life.

Nobody is coming.
Nobody is ever going to come.
Start walking.

 

This is hard work.