Escaping My Purple Abyss

TRUTH BE TOLD

Very recently I sadly realised that you should never beg for a space in anyone's life, especially when you have devoted yours to everyone else's. If you are important enough to people, especially family, they will prioritise you and show you that you are important. Fact is - actions speaks far louder than words.

Unfortunately we tend to totally loose ourselves in a relationship, revolving ourselves around a man. During marriage we utterly loose ourselves caring for your family, looking after a husband and raising kids, subconsciously merging / fusing ourselves with our family's lives, becoming a co-defendant. Our happiness depending on them.

Once there is no more caring left because the kids have grown up and left the home to start their own lives, some even totally pushing you out of their lives and you no longer hold a space in your partner's life either; the loneliness consumes you, the hurt stripping you from your last bit of happiness. That's when you are ripped back to reality.

REALITY CHECK - You in fact don't need anyone to make you happy, especially a man. Think back, when you were young and single, before getting involved in a relationship or getting married, you were happy and made yourself happy. You did things by yourself, you went places by yourself, you held your own company and you were a happy go lucky person. Before this life, you were alone and happy.

So start creating that life again. You do not need a self absorbed man or disloyal relatives. No matter whether they are related by blood or birth, it gives them no right to treat you with emotional abuse, animosity or alienation. Just because they are family is no excuse to allow their antagonism, after all they are just like any other human and should take responsibility for their own disloyalty.

Step away no matter how painful because trust me, it might be painful now but it is far more painful being dumped into a depression from which you will have a mighty struggle to escape because you keep on hanging on and living in vain hope. By the time you finally stop denying the truth and accept things will never change, your life has pass you by. Stop allowing people to control you and hurt you with their self absorbed lives.

Grasp the fact that you have to stop putting yourself on the back burner for others. You have paid your dues to everyone and are no longer responsible for anyone else's lives except your own. Life is short and you have to make use of the time you have on this earth and create your own life and happiness and live it. What is meant to be, will be.

EMOTIONAL ADDICTIONS
“In all things there is a law of cycles. Until you heal, eliminate your emotional addictions and change your thinking patterns, you will always recycle your relationships. “ “Developing an emotional habit means unconsciously training yourself to respond to a variety of triggers with a default emotional reaction. Over time, that feeling becomes a baseline for how you respond to the world. If anger is your default emotion, you might find yourself turning to it whenever you’re uncertain. You may even feel a sense of calm as this emotion washes over you.” “The cost of emotional addiction is that you live at the mercy of feelings provoked by circumstances (whether initiated by happenstance or foreordained by unconsciously imprinted negatively scripted behavior) and your perceptions of these events. The overpowering feelings transcend other brain responses, and you need to make sensible decisions, rather than react to impulses.”

“Emotions are energy in the body and when we feel them they affect every cell in the body. Neurotransmitters are released and the nervous system shifts. The most common place emotional addictions are acted out is in romantic relationships. The second is on social media. During the come down period, there’s exhaustion, pure drain. The mind is hyper vigilant. It will begin to create thoughts and emotional memories to feel the emotions. If that isn’t enough, a person will vent to friends and family members as another opportunity to relive the experience. Speaking about the experience is living the experience for the brain. ”

True transformation starts when we are in the mind set to break the chains to our emotional addictions. In response to my trauma experiences, I’ve learned to behave in certain ways to “protect” myself from further pain and hurt and I became dependent on a certain emotion for comfort, relief, distraction or escape. Unfortunately, my coping mechanisms developed into unhealthy patterns, causing more suffering and shutting myself off to the outside world. Although my emotional addictions; which consisted of Depressed Emotional Addiction, Anxiety Addiction and Temporal Lobe Addiction; were bad for me, I became attached to them as part of my protection from further hurt. Emotions are very powerful and are instrumental to our innate survival mechanisms. In addition they are the basis for our neurological connections.

During my healing journey I became aware of my addiction to negative emotions and repetitive patterns like fear and anger which created my depression and anxiety and ultimately resulted in me developing Fibromyalgia. My biggest emotional addiction was fear which is an emotional pain addiction and it is not something that gives way to a productive life. In fact it was a numbing, paralyzing experience which prevented me to live my life. Anger was another emotional addiction which resulted in major issues in my life. My personal and professional relationships suffered and it had devastating effects on my mental health.

I had to pause, feel the emotions and realize it’s all in my mind; I’m the one creating these addictions. I had to breathe deep, understand why and learn to release those addictions by cutting my strong emotional ties. I started researching and learning how to figure out a way to change and restore myself and support my emotional and mental health. I learned that whenever I experienced these emotions I must take ownership of them. I had to learn self-mastery by starting to identify with the self-limiting beliefs and emotional addictions which lead to my reactive state, I was taught which recurring patterns and senseless struggles are now no longer going to be relevant or appropriate. Recovering and healing comes with great happiness, freedom and well-being.

WHO AM I?

Our identity is a critical component of understanding who we are. It is our all-encompassing system of memories, experiences, feelings, thoughts, relationships, and values that define who each of us is. “Identity relates to our basic values that dictate the choices we make (e.g., relationships, career). These choices reflect who we are and what we value.” Our identity is a reflection of what we believe, what we do, and what we value. Yet, our sense of identity can be compromised by outside factors. That identity is false. It is something demanded of us.

I have asked myself countless times who am I and what is my purpose on this earth. As I sat here a while ago I realized that at this point in my life I truly don’t know. I don’t know what my unfeigned identity is anymore. So much of my identity was forced upon me. I’m so great at putting myself on the back burner, halting my life for the sake of others and holding in my emotions that I’ve lost myself along the way. And that is where I lost myself… Sitting there not knowing who I am and not knowing where to from here literally gave me an anxiety attack and I sat in the loneliness of my home sobbing my heart out. I’m truly so fu***ng lost I just don’t know where to from here. I know I had to let it go, I just did not how to do that. I sat sobbing most of the day. I beat myself up over everything and now I am just trying to figure out my life and where to from here.

This tedious identity caused me to experience a tremendous amount of stress. One of the biggest things holding me back from finding out who I am is that I have no real personal power. This has left me feeling frustrated, disconnected, and unfulfilled. I was the person that would dutifully navigate life and breezed through my duties and obligations with autopilot on. I was just a passenger passing through, noticing my haze of proverbial pain but not paying attention to it. It gave me an unyielding identity that outlined how I was to view the world and myself. Then in the midst of an emotional crisis, I decided to embark on a journey toward personal discovery. I set out to establish a purpose.

I searched for the clues in the person that I used to be. I assembled snippets of an muddled past. I unearthed issues of my life and scrutinized each occurrence carefully for a sequence to connect my past to the present. I anxiously yearned to present my life with some facade of harmony and resolution. On the contrary the more intense I rummage around, the more forlorn I felt. I just no longer recognized the old me, she was unemotionally impassive, hidden beneath arduous layers of mount up distress. I no longer recognized the woman that I once was and I felt bewildered. Throughout my journey of self-discovery, I had to learn to discard the layers my individuality that no longer served its purpose and was no longer advantageous to my present life. I learned that I could never truly lose myself because my identity is a moment in time. Re-discovering myself involved an eternal endurance of making the most of the present.

I re-discovered myself by recognizing the fact that I was initially never lost. “That which I most need is always to be found where I least wish to look. Absolutely everything I need to find is embedded in everything that I am afraid of.” My journey was about unearthing my fears in order to regain and assimilate the restrained aspects of myself into the rest of my individuality. This entailed an endeavor not to deflect on my path out of trepidation. If I am on a path and something would compromise my journey I must face it, not avoid it. The crucial fact was I had to destroy my fear and break it down into convenient, less significant portions. I intensely observed my fears and asked myself what am I afraid of, what am I eluding, and what am I unsuccessful to progress in?

SHADOW WORK

Your inner shadow is composed of parts of you that society has determined are not socially acceptable and you are taught from a very young age to suppress these feelings and behaviors. Your shadow is your dark side where you subconsciously reject taboo feelings and it defines the collective unconscious, a mysterious reservoir of psychological constructs common to all people. Your Shadow Self is some other part of you, an unacknowledged part of you that needs the opposite of what your conscious self knows it desires. It’s also the subconscious, the deeply hidden, regularly rejected part of you. The Shadow Self doesn’t work according to logic or accepted societal norms. It wants what it wants. And it often wants in direct opposition to our stated goals.

“By repressing your inner shadow it leads to dangerous consequences. Most often, the shadow manifests as our triggers — emotional reactions that we haven’t fully dealt with, but bubble up to the surface under the right (wrong) circumstances. It takes training, self-awareness, guidance, and courage to help you face your shadow self in a healthy way. With effort the shadow can be somewhat integrated into the conscious personality, but certain sections will be exceedingly resistant to moral control due to preserved society morals.”

By the time you reach adulthood and enter into a relationship and get married you are too bashful and inhibited to express or live out your desires and find it difficult to discuss your fantasies with your partner for the fear that you’ will shock them or scare the bejeezus out of your partner if you even suggested something unconventional. So also the shock when your partner suddenly comes forward with unconventional fantasies and desires, and you over think because society restricts you from being your authentic free self. The social order literally “mindf***s” us on how to live our lives. Anything that threatens the way you present yourself to the world will be seen as a threat to your identity — and ultimately, your safety.

What makes up your shadow depends on what you subconsciously reject within yourself. We usually hear this come up as negative self-talk. Often, these rejected parts of us are the result of childhood experiences.

Once I discovered my Darkness I was at war with my inner shadow and felt very rebellious to say the least. I learned that my “shadow” concealed desires and feeling that are not acceptable to society or even my consciousness, such as aggression, hatred, desires, lust and other elements of myself that I am less comfortable showing to others. I constantly yearned for certain fixations but society, morals and parental control lead to over thinking, insecurities. I had to dig into my shadows, dynamic psychic energy, archetypes and Individuation to analyze myself in order to get my entire being on the right track. I had to make friends with my Shadow self. It was during my healing process that I realised just how oppressed and dispirited I have truly become. I realised how much hate and anger I was still carrying around in me. I discovered that because of fear I never did live out my true desires and fantasies. My fear or lack of confidence steps up every single time and prevents me from doing what I realistically would like to do. I always wanted to be an eccentric free spirit with no inhibitions but yet again we were taught that certain behaviors, desires and sexual topics were taboo, not to be discussed or practiced in society.

It was my repulsion and denial of my inner shadow that gave it so much staying power. I learned then that what we keep on pushing away is what is energetically binding me. I had to embrace her in order to release her so I had to sit down and have a fat conversation with “Storm” as I named my shadow and at the ripe age of sixty I am becoming rebellious and I will follow my hidden desires. I broke my ancestral society prophecy. F**k society, this is my one and only life and I’ve wasted so many years because of society and their fu**ed up viewpoints and principles. I will no longer allow the limitations of society and others around me to become my own. From now on I will live my life as I desire and as I think worthy, within lawful boundaries of course, however if I shock anyone that is not my conundrum and I'm not going to apologize for being me…. Best everyone learn to cope with the new me or step off at the next station.

Just a word of advice. I am not on any form of Fibromyalgia, Antidepressant or Anxiety meds. My experience is the Au Naturel way for the simple reason that I found that chemical medication creates worse symptoms and it becomes a vicious circle where you end up with umpteen meds and getting more and more ill.

My healing consist of Power of The Mind healing, Energy healing, Soul searching, Working with my Shadow, Facing my demons, Conquering all my fears, Letting go of Control, Setting Boundaries and so much more... Everything will be explained in my blogs.

It was not an easy journey but with sheer determination, willpower and the power of the universe I made it out.

My healing journey started 11 years ago, starting in August 2012 with being bedridden with pain, depression and anxiety until this year, 2023. I've finally reached the end of my journey and I just love my life. Never ever again will I allow anyone or anything to have any control over me.

SOUL SEARCHING
Soul searching is looking for the answers to the questions of life. It is a lot of reflecting what has been and gone, looking at the here and now and wondering what is ahead of you.

All soul searching begins with a deep desire for something more and it is the journey of learning what that 'something more' is.” Too many people listen to the noise of the world instead of themselves. Listen to your Own Voice, your Own Soul. Our self-healing, self-rejuvenating capacities are activated when the mind, body and soul collaborate as a harmonious team, instead of contradicting each other.

Inside me I was a sad flickering pilot light yearning to once again burn like a roaring fire but I had no idea how I’m ever going to get back there. Pretending to be ok and hiding behind my mask was not kind to my system. I reached a critical desolate moment in my life where my soul was just so lost and I was at war with my shadow self. I experienced a disconnection with who I truly was and felt stuck and unfulfilled which was very frustrating to me. This was a clear sign that things in my life was off and I needed to shift back into a place of alignment and onto a life path that feels authentic and Soul searching was the prescribed solution in this situation. When this happened I isolated myself because my inner shadow does not like company. In order for me to move with and not against and for me to gain a sense of perspective on my life, be conscious of the meaning to my existence in this world and help me understand my purpose, I went into deep hiding within my deep dark purple abyss., except for those days I was forced to put my happy mask on and go out or interact with family and friends.

I always saw this quote “Sometimes in Life your situations will keep repeating itself until you learn your lesson “ and I could never really grasp the meaning until I had to ask myself what was the lesson the Universe was trying to teach me? What did I have to learn in order for me to prevent myself from repeating the same patterns which caused my unhappiness and to be stuck in this dark abyss of depression and anxiety? I had to be painfully candid with myself and discovered truths I denied for years.

My turning point was my pending divorce in 2022. At this point in my life I felt like an empty shell, shattered and numb. Like someone reached deep down inside me and scooped out my soul. I just had absolutely no more f***s to give. This was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. During our 6 months of separation I was forced to take a massive step back, literally go sit on my ass and breathe. It was then that I realised I hardly breathed anymore. My breathing was so shallow and at time I was actually holding my breath in. I had to learn to breathe properly again.

I realised I had to look at the bigger picture. I had to submerge myself into unfathomable and profound soul searching. I had to re-evaluate, rediscover and it took exactly a year to break free from my transformation cocoon. I knew the old happy go lucky me was forever gone and it will be pointless in hoping to find my old self, she was buried. I was a shell of a human being and had to rediscover myself, learn to live again, stand up for myself and be my own person. As hard as it has been, because this was a damn lonely and arduous journey, I had to leverage my process by not expecting my future to look like my past and I had to bring in the gift of self-love, self-worth and forgiveness. My soul searching journey was an intense but fruitful one…

YOU CAN’T HEAL IN THE SAME ENVIRONMENT THAT MADE YOU ILL
The older you get, the more you realize you have no desire for drama, conflict and any kind of intensity. When you are in a relationship or even a friendship, you are so emotionally involved that you can’t really see things for what they truly are. There is even a time when you have this weird void knowing they are mind fu***ng you and you ask yourself, why am I doing this, why am I allowing it?, Why? How did I get here? How is this my life?

I eventually reached the stage in my life where I decided that I want to live an “unbulls**tafied” life and on the last leg of my journey I finally decipher and identify with the fact that I will never heal in the same environment which made me unwell in the first place. You come to a conclusion that you either eliminate those toxic people, situations and environments that created your distress or in the event, for whatever reason, you are unable to eliminate, you have to step up to the place and restructure and set boundaries to suit your requirements.

However I will never get what I truly deserve if I remain attached to what I’m supposed to let go of and I had to face those who have caused my toxic environment where possible. In some cases I either made an attempt to face them and resolve the problem at hand or in the circumstances where my attempt were not receptive, I was forced to step aside / walk away, as strenuous as it was. I reasoned that it can’t be more arduous as what I am already enduring and I was right. I am so much more at peace.

HIDING BEHIND MY MASK
Fibromyalgia is accompanied with many aches and pains, especially myofascial pain syndrome, sciatica and many other symptoms. When suffering from a chronic illness, for which there is no cure, you have to learn to live with pain a person tend to moan a lot about your pain. It takes over your life - you wake up in pain, your whole day you pain and tonight when you go sleep you are still pain.

Then when you encounter unsympathetic and tactless people telling you all you can do is moan and whine, you slowly start to withdraw and start hiding behind your “Mask to which you become adapted. Over the past 10 years I became the queen of hiding my aching physical pain, my depression, my hurt and my anxiety behind a mask of smiles, funny expressions and trying to act as normal as possible. I made comedy out of my misfortune and heartbreak; I diluted my pain with laughter, mocked my own weight - that’s how I live - I masque my poignant anguish.

No one truly knew the actuality of my deep dark Purple Abyss, neither did they noticed my severe level of exhaustion as I disguised this very well. They only saw the outside Ronelle, Ronelle who is giving, loving, smiling and showing up for everyone, until I lost my sparkle because on the inside I felt fatigued, tired of always trying to keep up, tired of showing up for everyone, tired of heartache and just plain exhausted of the pain consuming my body. I was tired of loneliness, feeling unloved, tired of worrying and living with anxiety. I was tired of being taken for granted and the more I gave the more was squeezed out of me. I was exhausted from this disease chewing away at my life. But still emotionless I kept on going; I kept on giving and loving, kept on hoping. I kept on pushing forward out of love, even in my exhaustion. I even tried to stay positive for others while I was breaking until I realised I cannot help others if I cannot even heal myself.

I fought this demon alone – Me and my mask because I did not want to be a burden to everyone else. Only those who truly understood what I was going through could pick up in my irritable mood or the way I walk whether I was in pain or not. Keeping pain in makes you moody, frustrated with your body and irritable. My own husband did not understand my illness and never realised how deeply rooted my depression was; my friends and family never knew the full extent of my depression or pain or hurt. One ostensible friend even went as far as telling people (clients in fact) she was tired of my “Bi-polar” attitude. Just shows you how uncaring, insensitive and uneducated people can be when it comes to chronic and mental health issues. Years ago when I was in my deepest darkest abyss I was met with an unsympathetically retort and was told to “Snap out of my damn morose dark moods”. To be told you need to snap out of your “morose dark moods” when your mind is screaming to be rescued and no rescue was forthcoming; was the most tactless, inferior condemnation someone could have ever made. However, my dear friend Karma decided to pay her visit years down the line and has now tossed her into her into her “dark morose moods”. I just hope she will think back to her callous remark and can now come to terms with those dark aspects and respect what I was going through.

On my healing journey I realised and understood what I was going through and made a huge endeavour to work on myself. I stopped blaming everyone else, I stopped playing the sufferer, remove my mask and became a warrior. It was time to start living my life as my natural authentic self – No Mask.

IT’S OK
“Dear Self, everything is going to be ok. Take a deep breath and keep going”

Right in the beginning of my journey I uncovered the meaning of “ITS OK”. It’s ok to have bad days and it’s ok not to feel guilty. In order for me to work through my healing process and to protect my energy I cancelled many commitments, sometimes did not answer calls, procrastinated to respond to messages, postponed meetings and changed my mind umpteen times and IT WAS OK to do so. It’s not selfish to put yourself first, it’s ok to do what’s best for you. It is ok to want to be alone, it’s ok to take time off, it is ok to rest and do absolutely nothing. Never give anyone the power to make you feel guilty of that. People who love and care for you will understand and won’t take it personally. They will allow you your space to heal and they will still be there for you at the end of your journey.

It’s ok to start again and it’s ok to ask for help. It’s ok if the only thing you did today was just breathe! It is ok to be mad or sad. It’s ok if you are numb and don’t know what to feel. It’s ok if you can’t figure things out as you go along. It is ok to change your mind, to make mistakes or walk away from something that is disturbing your peace. It is ok to speak up and it’s ok to let go. It is ok to be less than perfect. It is ok to be yourself without explaining yourself to anyone. It is ok to be different. It is ok to be yourself. It is ok because this is your life, your body, your cause, your beliefs, your mind, your heart and your feelings. You do not need validation from anyone but yourself. Remember that!!

“It's okay... to begin your story today. Those mistakes you've made along the way are lessons, not failures. You were meant to get back up and find a way that resonates with you. There is no expiration date to reinventing yourself.”
Stay strong, be positive, take it day by day – We all struggle and that it ok.

The world is full of people who are not going to like you no matter what you say, do or try. Be who you are, you are not everyone’s cup of tea and that is perfectly OK.

AWAKENING
Wise words: “The root of suffering is Attachment. “Awakening happens when you are no longer living in a dream world where you filter everything through your self-image and focusing on the future and the past”. “Going through life on autopilot without giving much thought to who you are, what you want, and why you are here.

Life does not allow you to go back in time and fix what we have done wrong or what we’ve endured and suffered in the past. It allows us to improve and live each day better than our last. What’s broken can be mended and what hurts can be healed. “Life will keep on bringing you the same test over and over again until you pass it”

Most of your stress comes from the way in which you respond to a situation, not the way life is. You cannot suffer the past or future because they do not exist. What you are suffering is your memory and your imagination”. What happens inside you is the result of what you are thinking and feeling.

My awakening process was dark and lonely. Having all these questions pop up is like turning on a light in a previously dark room. I had to analyze my life in my dark abyss and started to observe my patterns. As I started feeling a sense of connection I started practicing self-compassion and through that I started to let go of attachments. I had to increase my authenticity and I had to find my inner peace. I had to unlearn so much s**t that I have learned. I realised that no one is coming to rescue me from myself, my inner demons, my lack of confidence or my dissatisfaction with myself and my life. I have to rule my mind or it will rule me. No one is responsible for my emotional reaction except me.

Only I can rescue myself and so my rescue mission starts.

HEALING

All my setbacks and challenges have caught me off guard. Healing is not always pretty and healing is not so much about getting better; it’s about letting go of everything that wasn’t me. I had to learn to face adversity with grace and courage. This was a journey of soul healing to free myself from the dark abyss I was trapped in and letting go. Stepping aside was the most strenuous undertaking I had to submit myself to. I had to literally mind f**k my way through this journey because if your mindset is negative you need all the strength to get to the point to stand up and change it around.

It’s letting go of all the toxic energies, negative vibes and pressured expectations that was draining my being. I needed to find a medium where I can be in a healthier equilibrium and enhanced spirit and self-confidence. I had to face my insecurities and fears and conquer them. When I was made aware that the bad episodes in my life where indeed trauma and I was forced to relive, it and let it go. I had to learn to let go of Control – I bumped heads with the harsh conclusion that I cannot control everything and everyone in my life and I cannot heal everyone. Let me tell you I truly struggled to let go of control because control was my protection system. I permanently wanted to protect everyone by trying to control how their lives should run in order to avoid trauma and disappointment because I knew how that felt. I had to learn to recognize what I could not change and step aside because if I did not, it changed me.

I had to journey deep within my being and learn to become an unbroken person again. I explored all avenues to get me back on track. From physical healing to spiritual healing, energy/ qi healing and shadow work. I turned myself upside down to find my authentic truth. I had to recognize, take in and admit to my own mistakes and work on them. This was one of the most difficult sessions in my life. No one wants to admit to their faults and wrong doing – your ego does not allow for that. I had to be open and accept constructive criticism. I had to accept that my failures were part of my journey and instead of fearing it I had to appreciate it as lessons it taught me. I also had to learn to become conscious of people’s emotional abuse and gas-lighting and I had to untie myself from their toxic grips. I had to forgive those who contributed towards my trauma, especially those who broke my heart and my trust. I had to forgive myself for allowing people to walk all over me and hurt me.

In the final stage of my healing journey it was discovered that my “essence” was completely depleted, my energy exhausted and my Qi totally out of alignment. I have reached a point in life, especially the past year where I was mentally, emotionally and spiritually drained, hence me being ill all the time. As per my psychic healer, my “medicine woman” as I call her, I’m still dealing with a relatively out of control environment in which there is an overflow of emotions depleting my essence. I’m literally falling apart but in her words I was “putable backable togetherable” again.
Just as I thought I have conquered most part of my journey, I’m being informed that I have not fully let go of the disturbing things but that I was in fact suppressing them rather than processing them, which was causing my internal blockage. I had to go through weeks of intense healing therapy to re-align my essence, energy and qi in order to restore my positive energy flow throughout my body.

This made me finally realise that as difficult as this process is, in order to heal fully I was going to have to stop suppressing these final issues, deal with it once and for all and take no prisoners.

This was a long road ahead and this is where my work began.