Home, happiness, and changes

It's hard to believe it's been almost a month since I posted anything. I guess you could say that I had so much to say that I couldn't say anything at all. Or maybe I didn't know where to start.


Many of you know my "backstory".  I was in what you might call a "situation". I was not happy, I didn't feel like I had a life of my own. But then I did something about it, I made a change. However, moving out, leaving my wife, and trying to make my own life was harder than I imagined. 


The 20 years of living inside a monster that I myself had created could not be changed overnight, and as I found out, could not even be changed in the better part of the 2 years it had been since I left. 


You see, while I did leave, and move in with friends, I never did get the proverbial "monkey" off my back. First of all, I moved only an hour down the road, still close enough for me to feel the influence of the monster. I still didn't feel free, I didn't feel I was "home". I was still so far from everything I loved, and didn't feel I was indeed living my own life. 


All the talk about how I could make my own decisions, all the posts about how I had started my new life, and yet somehow I was just going on doing things with the same thought process, the same way I had done everything for almost 20 years. "What would SHE think? Can I do this without making her angry? I can't tell her what I'm doing, she's going to go ballistic!" These and many more are the thoughts that dominated everything I did when we were together, and also when I left, even being an hour down the road, where she was not "in my face" every day. 


So what did I end up doing? I went to work every day, and came home. Nothing else. Well, if you could call it home. It was merely the house I lived in, it wasn't home at all. My true home, the place I knew I was supposed to be, was somewhere much further away, and I was miserable still. I was still not making decisions with my own mind, there was always fear, the fear of what "she" might do. She has a "spy" network you know, people checking things on the internet, always keeping tabs on me, she can't stand not knowing what I'm doing or who I'm talking to. So I basically did....nothing......just went to work, played around on the computer a bit, and slept, that was my "life".


And then, it happened. 


Fate intervened.


The opportunity presented itself. Yes folks, the opportunity to FINALLY go HOME. It came totally out of the blue, out of nowhere, the message came to me one day that said, "How would you like to come home?" 


You can imagine my surprise and utter elation when I read that message! Really? I can go HOME?


So I did something totally out of character for me. I didn't think, I didn't over analyze the situation. I took action.


I packed up my stuff, and hightailed it out of there. Well, after taking the time to ditch everything I could not take with me in the car. There were many things I got rid of, material things, huge chunks of my past that were doing nothing but weighing me down, keeping me tied to that place. My only focus, my only goal, was to get myself to where I belonged, to where I could be myself, where I was safe.


I did it. I moved, again, but this time, I went HOME.


I can't tell you why I did it like I did, and I can't even say what it felt like. I wasn't "feeling" anything. I certainly didn't let that lifetime of fear that had driven my thought process for so very long get in the way of what I wanted to accomplish. I didn't think ahead to what "she" might think, I didn't make my decision based on what I thought she might want me to do, I just DID it. That, in and of itself, was an intriguing sensation. My mind was quiet.


So now, here I am, writing to you from home. For those of you who have not yet connected the dots, and who might not follow my best friend Bella's blog, I am staying with her now, in Florida, and I could not be happier. She and her husband are two of the most wonderful people in the world, and for them to give me the chance to come home means more to me than I think either of them know. 


I am truly free now, free to be who I really am. I am still adjusting to that particular feeling, after all, as I said earlier, what has been trained into me for 19 years cannot be completely forgotten in just a few days, but it's quickly becoming my reality. 


What do you do when you have no fear? I'll tell you what you do. 


You do what you want. You remove any filters in your mind. You wake up in the morning and you live in the moment, taking on each situation with new eyes. You really are your own person, and you don't have to answer to anyone but yourself. You remove the blinders from your eyes, and you see the world as it truly is, a world to be experienced in any way you see fit.


I've made a huge change this time folks. The biggest change I've made so far in this life.


I am HOME.


I am happy.........No, I am ecstatic, overjoyed, and for once in this lifetime, satisfied.


I am not the man I was.