I've Got a Story to Tell

I once was a wife. 

There was a point in time when I’d wake up alone and astonished. When I drowned in the silence of my apartment, silence that I had craved, and then, when granted, suffocated me. For the first few weeks after moving out of my condo I shared with my husband, I sat in my empty loft on the one lone rattan chair that cocooned me until my new furniture arrived. I watched an entire TV series in that chair, the echo of the TV boomeranging off the walls, my puffy eyes reflected back at me when I powered the TV off. 

I don’t know when it happened. When the switch occurred. Day after day I would wake up in disbelief that I was no longer someone’s partner. That I was on my own and still functioning. I wish I could mark it on my calendar. The day I woke up no longer surprised that I wasn’t a wife, but surprised that I once was. 

My phone likes to remind me of prior memories. Wedding photos pop up at random, and like a game of whack-a-mole, I quickly swipe them away. But the other day, I pulled on the thread that it presented and I opened the photo memory. I stared at myself in wonder, as if I was looking at someone else entirely. Not me. I looked like a dream I once had that I can still vaguely recall but am fuzzy on the details. I dissected my face for any possible signs of foreshadowing. Did I know back then what would happen? Did I know that day? Or before I got engaged? Did I promise forever when I really just meant for now? I recently heard someone say that people plan more for their wedding than they do their marriage, and I understood myself as having fallen into the former. The countless nights we would lay in bed as boyfriend and girlfriend and I would beg him to answer me. When will it happen? When will you propose? When can we get married? Not because I was so desperate to have him as my husband. But rather so desperate to check the boxes of what deemed the “right” steps for someone my age.

For nine years my story pretty much stayed the same. I was Jenna the yoga teacher. Jenna the wife. Jenna the dog mom. Jenna the proud Chicagoan. From outside looking in, I was happy and fulfilled and so fortunate. But behind the curtain I was disconnected, miserable, and would constantly say to my husband after our hundreds of fights: this is not my life. We were a full-on Monet, how Cher famously describes Amber in Clueless. From far away were okay, but up close we were a big ol’ mess.

When I could no longer claim those descriptions of wife and Chicagoan and dog mom, I was forced to create a new story. One I’ve been telling for the past two years and have been oh-so-attached to, like a new sweater that I haven’t been able to take off. I tell the story whenever I meet someone new. When they ask where I’m from or how long I’ve lived here. It goes like this: I moved to California two years ago post-divorce and the transition was really tough. I had a difficult time adjusting. I was still healing. And worst of all, I left my dog with my ex-husband in Chicago and it nearly destroyed me. I still really miss the city. And I end that part with a meek smile. Beneath that story, I tell a different one to myself. And it goes like this: I don’t know who I am or where I’m going or how I got here. I am lost, I am surviving, I am sopping wet with sadness, and I may not make it out alive. And that is what I lived in for these entire past two years. I felt like a failure, like I was heartless for leaving my dog, I was convinced I would never find love again, and that I was incapable of loving in general. 

Perhaps because of this story, I have subsequently had a recurring dream for the last two years. Several times a month I would dream that I was headed to the airport. And en route I would discover that I was either too late and would never make my flight, or that I forgot to put my luggage in the car and would have to turn back, or I’d make it to the airport and my bags would get stolen, or I’d finally get on the airplane but there’d be complications and we’d never take off. The details were always slightly different, but the result was always the same. I was trying to get somewhere. But I could never make it. I was stuck. Trapped. Suspended in time. 

Somewhere along the way, the calendar date that I can’t quite mark, I began to rewrite my story. Somewhere along the way, I started to realize that the sweater no longer fit. It felt itchy and misshapen and misaligned with the weather. Some say that as humans we finally change when we get sick of our own bullshit. I told this story for so long that I got sick of hearing myself talk. I got sick of feeling the way my story made me feel. I got sick of dreaming the same damn dream. You know when you buy a new set of dishes or glasses and you have to remove the stickers off of each one? It’s a great day when the stickers peel off with ease. But usually it’s an arduous process. You have to scrape at the edge of one with your fingernail to get a headstart. And if you peel it too quickly, it just rips off the paper and leaves the adhesive on the glass. So you have to be so gingerly, so patient. And just when you feel like you’re home free, there always seems to be those last few stringy pieces of adhesive that want so badly to stay behind. And that’s how my healing process has felt the last few years. Slow and steady, like my fingers and toes are still adhered to the old story. And the realization after examining my wedding photos — the realization that I am so far from who that version of me was — felt like the final release of the sticker. I’m now smoothing my fingers around my life searching for any trace of residual stickiness. And, so far, I’m finding that I’m unstuck. The glass is clean. The page is blank.

In yoga we practice awareness in a variety of ways, usually starting from the macro (our bodies, the shape we’re in, what’s stretching and what’s engaging) and it moves into the micro (how we react to a pose, how it changes our breath, what we believe to be true in any given moment). When we enter awareness of the micro, we can access our stories. So perhaps you have a story around doing arm balances (I’m not strong enough), or a story around flexibility (I’ll never be able to touch my toes), or a story around the final resting pose, savasana (I don’t know how to relax). And the beauty of discovering the stories is that we then have a chance to decide if they’re still true. Do they still hold their weight? Or is it time for a rewrite? Or does a story even need to exist?

Just last week I dreamed that I was walking through the international terminal at the airport. I had a bunch of boxes with me and a couple of suitcases. I walked through the doors and directly to a staircase. I didn’t even have to go through security or wait in any lines or show my passport. I simply ascended the stairs, my boxes and luggage magically appearing at the top. At the top of the stairs I realized that they led me right onto the plane. I walked down a very spacious aisle and sat in my seat that was oversized and cushiony. I buckled up. The plane took off. And I looked at the woman next to me and said, “I can’t believe how easy that was.”