From heaven to hell and a glimpse of a higher heaven still

My stay in heaven didn't last. I knew it wouldn't, but I only expected to come back to earth, not to hell. I was on a gigantic slide, rushing me from heaven straight past earth and dumping me into hell with a painful thud. My own personal hell. I slid past a fallen world when I went to the dentist to get my crappy mercury fillings replaced and had one complication after another - anesthetics not working, mercury having entered the nerve canal, a filling penetrating into my gums, a tool slipping and slicing open my gums, a bleeding gash on my tongue - but still I kept on sliding.

I tried so hard to hold on to the bliss of rainbow land, to the healing I had experienced. And in some ways I did. I never lost fretted about my ex-husband again, and I never lost hope, having had a new hope set before me so recently. But I became severely depressed. The more I tried to share my newfound hope and my discoveries in the area of healing, the more I met with opposition. Tension between me and my family grew as they felt more and more uncomfortable - maybe even threatened - by my exploits into areas outside of the realm of evangelical christianity.

I started to feel torn between going on to become who I am meant to be and going back to who my folks would have liked me to be. To be fair, they do want what is best for me, only they believe my happiness to lie in the opposite direction of where I regularity glimpse it. As the tension grew I entered into a no-man's-land, hovering in the space between what was and what is to be without truly being at all. I longed equally for days gone by and a future I envisioned daily. I was in waiting and growing desperately impatient to live again.

Since I couldn't live in my future of choice yet -a writer, speaker, and healer - I sought to escape the excruciating tension by trying to conform to my family's idea of my happiness - a secure, "normal" life. I started eating "normal" again and immediately felt the effects of suppressed emotions and less energy. Although I felt more lethargic, I also didn't experience pain as intensely anymore and became addicted to this slightly anesthetic way of living. I also stopped seeking out energy healing modes, ceased doing yoga, etc. In essence, I was becoming quite "normal" and was starting to fit in better again.

But inside I felt like I was descending further and further on my slide from heaven to hell. I began to realize that this was a non-stop trip that did not include the exit Normal Life. I tried to struggle back up, but was as successful as a child walking up a slide in socks. At best I managed a few steps up before bruising my knees and falling flat on my tummy. Each time I reached out into my future, meeting with alternative healers or refusing to eat something I knew was making me miserable, I was either met by taunting remarks, shaking heads, or a silent onslaught of disapproval energy.

Right around that time my therapist started asking questions about my family and my living situation. As I described some of my struggles trying to fit in and avoiding disapproval she was very disturbed. We started talking about my upbringing (that's what therapists DO after all, isn't it?) and I realized that there were patterns and issues I had never dealt with that had actually set me up for an abusive relationship.

At first I was only getting more miserable. It seems like a contradiction to be living with your family while trying to work through your issues growing up. I started thinking of ways of moving out, but of course I didn't know how to manage financially. But then it seemed like the perfect opportunity opened up. I was invited to volunteer at a raw food event held less than 1 1/2 hours away. The event itself was awesome and encouraging, it got me excited about healthy eating again and encouraged me about the future.

And then I was offered a job. Not just any job. The perfect job. Or so it seemed. The raw foods event was held at an all organic natural healing retreat center and they were looking for someone to run the kitchen! I talked to the current kitchen manager and we hit it off. She started talking as if I already had the job. I stayed an extra day to try out working in the kitchen. I was confident and excited - until I talked to the retreat manager. She met me with a critical attitude, emphasizing how much responsibility the position encompassed. The more she talked, the more nervous I grew.

At the end of my interview I was a nervous wreck. One of the raw food event speakers took me out to the woods to eat a raw wild dinner consisting of wild herbs, mushrooms, and berries. Then we practiced Qi Gong together and talked around our camp fire. I was starting to feel confident again and went to bed fairly relaxed. The next morning I spent some time in meditation and felt prepared to start "my new job". And then everything went wrong. I didn't know where things were or went and was afraid to ask. A couple of professional cooks came to join the team and I got the impression that they did not particularly like me.

By the end of the day I had broken a couple of dishes, put the produce away wrong, turned the oven too high, couldn't figure out how to use the machines, cut the veggies wrong, and left with a new record of screwing up every 10 minutes or so. Naturally I got an email a few days later saying that I "lacked competence for the position". Awesome. Not that I would have done anything different in their place. I would have thought a total moron was applying for a position that was way over her head.

That was the moment I felt my bum thud unto the ground at the end of the slide. Final destination: hell. Source of condemnation: self. Thankfully I took a couple of looks around, got back on my feet, and decided I wasn't going to stay here. And thus began my journey upwards with the eventual glimpse of a higher heaven still.

And that glimpse came through meeting someone. A male someone. A male someone I connected with on several levels. In many ways he was the kind of guy I would want to be with. When I met him, I thought he lived on a whole different plain and would never even notice me in my lowliness. I was very wrong.

He took an interest in me. I was just coming back around, feeling OK about myself, but definitely a long ways from thinking someone as successful and well-respected as this particular someone could possibly take an interest in someone like me. We hung out as friends. Just friends. Of course. A hug here. A neck-rub there. A number of smiles. A larger number of things in common. A very long massage.

And that's where it ended. It could have gone further and there's no point in denying that part of me desperately wanted it to. But another - wiser - part of me told me that I was neither ready nor was he the right one for me. We were going to make great friends, just friends, but nothing more. He asked why I didn't want to take this further. I told him something along the lines of not being centered and not wanting to loose myself by opening myself further to him. I was trembling inside, taking a stand for myself and telling him "no". I thought I knew how badly wrong saying "no" to a man could go. After all, I had spent nearly a decade with a man who would not take "no" for an answer no matter how much discomfort and pain he'd cause me.

But he was not like my ex-husband. He nodded and accepted my "no" and respected me and my boundaries. I was so geared up to fight and defend my position that I was caught off guard. Next I expected him to terminate our friendship, since it was obviously not going to be taken any further and my ex-husband had convinced that all men were the same, only interested in the same old thing. I was wrong again. We spent more time together in which he was always careful to respect me and my boundaries while enjoying and strengthening our friendship.

Eventually it came time to part since he didn't live nearby. We parted as friends. As good friends with no further expectations. As good friends who would continue to share a connection and who would always share the secret of what could have been, what almost had been. A secret that made us both smile knowing smiles, knowing that we would continue to be very good long distance just-friends.

My encounter with this just-friend tore through the veil hiding a higher heaven behind the one I had already tasted. A heaven in which I could fully except myself as desirable, as beautiful, as attractive, as exciting, as sexy. My just-friend was starting to convince me of all of these truths and then some. His touch, though a just-friend touch, made me want to be me with all my heart, made me want to live in my body and nowhere else. I knew I had to gain that acceptance of self from myself rather than borrowing it from someone else, but my just-friend's temporary loan held the promise of my future - living in a higher heaven still.