Sanctuary

Have you ever been to a zoo, one with a section just for butterflies? A butterfly sanctuary is a place where we can experience these beautiful peaceful creatures, right?
But is it really a sanctuary?
It's beautiful to us, it's mesmerizing, enchanting even, to sit or stand so close to the silent creature that we long to see on a spring or summer day. Glancing at it's wings before it hides in the safety of the sun's rays, draping your arm above your eyes to try and see it's wings one last time, it's almost as if this tiny creature wants to fly away. As if they know that given the chance we'll try and capture it. No intentional harm is done, but harm can be done regardless. 
So instead it flits from one area to the next, reaching high before dipping down in a wonderful dance with nature.
In these places where we capture those moments and try to recreate them within the confines of a shelter, it's an illusion. They are not on a journey, they are not moving from flower to flower until finally reaching their destinations, they are trapped.

I feel trapped.

If my adult life was built by a deceitful person and was only illusions, does that mean that the world I live in might be like one of these sanctuaries? What if the way I felt in my happiest moments were just concoctions, experiments, a test to make him feel the way he wanted to feel and brighten his own reality? My beautiful home really just enough room to move around in, but not flourish and grow?

I really do wrestle with thoughts, like we all do, trying to pin down exactly the emotion churning in the pit of my stomach. The insecurities abound, ones that on a normal day we would be telling ourselves in our finest "guuurrrrlll" voice, "you be trippin, yo. it's not like that and you survived, you build your own reality" .................no? just me? I guess my inner sista comes out when I need a pep talk, she makes me smile........

I do try and talk myself out of these kinds of thoughts though because I realize that how someone else's deceit affects me is my choice. I understand now that how I felt was real, and the pain I went through is completely valid. That just because I didn't know the whole story doesn't mean my character was not experiencing the plot. The journey I was on was a guided trail but the future is all mine, I have to know that the choices I made are simply that: made. The past, however full of lies, is something that I can't change, it's something that I can't control, and something that has brought me out of a confinement and into something so much bigger.

So instead of feeling trapped, like the walls are coming closer and the ceiling is getting lower, like the air is stale and the flowers are fake, I will just peel a bit of my shell off and continue to let the truth absorb in my freshly freed skin. I have a beautiful world all around me, my children are wonderful and I accomplished goals that I didn't think I would do. If you go back and read some of the previous posts, I talk about being a self sabotage junkie. How I would stand in my own way. Then after things with my marriage fell apart I realized I needed to do this, go back to school, for me. For my kids. For my future...and I did.

I graduated. That flower in the field wasn't fake, it was full of a sweet nectar that is sustaining me on this part of my journey. 
I got hired at my dream job...no not a figurative 'it's in my desired field' dream job, legit dream job. I wanted to work here since 7th grade, I never thought I would, but I am and it feels amazing. To provide for my family, to go forward and know that I have a good future ahead is something big to a girl who most of the time didn't know where she would be sleeping the next night. It's something that my little girl looks at me with pride and it's something when says she wants to help people too.

So even if some of my journey was housed in a sanctuary, where things were out of my control, it's ok. Because a big storm came and destroyed that false safety and pushed the butterflies into a real world that is terrifying and wonderful, so full of opportunities and hardships. Even if when the builder of said sanctuary tries to entice the creature back into a "safe" place, the new creature has seen outside the walls, outside the illusion, and isn't wanting to ever go back inside.