Tell Me About a Time You Were Uprooted
This is one of my free writes from the current writing group I'm in. We're sent a prompt, given 10 minutes, and this is the result. Aside from spelling corrections, it is 100% unedited. Today's prompt was: Tell me about being uprooted:
Let me tell you something crazy. In July of 2009 I had been married for 3 years. We were in our early 20s, fumbling through finding ourselves and staying connected to each other while experiencing all that life had to offer. Bobby, my then-husband, had a dear friend - let's call him James - who had married a lovely woman - let's call her Debs. We really connected with them and were each attracted to the other's partner: Bobby to Debs and me to James.
We also - all four of us - had strong individual friendships with each other. James and I were bonded in our own special way, same as I was with Debs and also with Bobby. They moved to Washington, D.C. and we missed them terribly - so much so that we decided we would move to be with them.
In July of 2009 Bobby and I went to visit them in D.C. and spent a wonderful week taking our intimacy to an even deeper level - James and I had sex and Debs and Bobby had sex and the four of us were all so deeply, sweetly, wildly affectionate with each other all week. It was absolutely blissful. We went apartment hunting looking at really fancy buildings with doormen and penthouses - we were 4 adult working professionals so our budget was gigantic. Bobby and I returned home and quickly sold most of our belongings, moved out of our condo and into a friends spare room in the month or so before we made the big move to D.C.
Then. The bomb dropped. Debs and James called to say they had split up. It was just a few weeks after our visit and a few weeks before our planned cross country move. We were devastated.
Then the bomb got bigger. A month or so after that - Bobby and I separated in a dramatic fashion - I had been sleeping with someone else (openly, not in a "cheating" sort of way) and realized things about Bobby that were not okay with me, but were never going to change and then I did LSD with the guy I was sleeping with and while trippin we had sex without a condom and I found myself pregnant.
Interestingly, I had a month-long house sitting gig - which ended up being the most perfect timing as it literally started the day all the shit hit the fan and I could not go back to the rented spare room in the friends house and live with Bobby anymore.
And of course - super curious that we had already moved out of our condo and sold most of our stuff so there was no dividing of the things or who's going to live in the house or anything like that. SO WEIRD.
In the month I was house sitting I was wildly uprooted. Everything I knew was gone. A mere month earlier I was "happily" married, and planning a very exciting move to a coast I've always wanted to live on to move into a fancy pants building with people I loved. I was on top of the world.
Until I wasn't anymore.
Now I was in a strangers house, googling divorce, making an appointment for an abortion, trying to find a place to live, and figuring out how long the money I had was going to last me (I had quit my job in prep to move to D.C.)
I remember sitting in the house I was house sitting (ha!) and thinking, "Fuck. Ok. I know there is a reason for all of this. And I would like that reason to become clear to me sooner rather than later. I don't want it to take 10 years for me to be like - oh, I get it now it all makes sense."
That reason was clear very fucking soon. By the time my house sitting gig was up I had found a room to rent in an earth friendly community house. I had been learning so much about health and clearing all of the toxic crap out of my life - food, cleaning products, rotten friendships, etc. - and moving into this house was the kick in the ass I really needed to make the transition from mainstream me who had grown up microwaving dinners, working an hourly paying job with benefits, and following the masses - to the New Me. It was a true awakening.
I had a great place to live, was surrounded by beautiful inspiring and supportive people, had budgeted my money to last me some months, during which I started my own business and was able to sustain myself once my nest egg ran out. I did all kinds of personal work, clearing out old childhood shit, crap from my marriage, old patterns, shitty belief systems. And I went to Europe for 3 months to travel around alone - talk about a reset.
I had been wildly uprooted and "lost everything" to start over in a dramatic fashion and lay the foundation for who I am today - the Me that I always wanted to be.
I wouldn't change a thing.
You guys. Sign up for one of Jena's Writing Groups. This is my second one and I am being dazzled all over again. The first group I did was 5 months ago and the prompts were oh so perfect for that time in my life. This second time around I even had the thought that I'd run out of things to write about. That the prompts would just prompt me to write about the same stuff. Ha! Silly me. This batch of prompts....it's just fucking uncanny how perfect it is for me. Like a tarot card reading or a psychic or something else where you're like....they couldn't possibly have known. But they knew. I promise you it will be just exactly what you need.
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And what about being the YOU that you always wanted to be? Maybe it's time you join me in Reality Rehab. It's a four-month online course to uncover your inner badass.