According to Gibbs’ Rule 91, “when you decide to walk away, don’t look back.”

30 July 2021 – For months, I have known that I was carrying something with me that I needed to walk away from. For these same many months, I have thought I needed to walk away from HOPE. Hope for a better tomorrow, hope for happiness, hope for joy, hope for anything. It had been so long since my heart smiled. I haven’t been able to feel anything. Nothing hurts. Nothing feels good. I have been numb to everything except physical pain. That’s what I thought I needed to walk away from, and I was distraught.

When you lose all hope – literally all – it’s impossible to live. For three and a half years, I was at a loss. I didn’t know if my life would ever be good again, and I was sure I would never be happy again. Six months ago, I decided that I couldn’t continue living the same life full of sadness, but I didn’t know what to do about it – so I changed everything. I quit my job and tried really hard to pull away from the people I care about. If I couldn’t find hope in anything, I didn’t want to take others down with me, and I was tired of being hurt. My heart was dead and black and cold, and my mind was full – so I escaped.

The last six months were mostly nothing but darkness and heartache. It stayed that way for the next 5 months, 3 weeks, 12 hours and about 11 minutes. I planned to leave Colorado, and while driving back to Virginia, I would leave all of my hope at a random spot on the highway, never to be seen again. Rule 91, “when you decide to walk away, don’t look back.” I was leaving my hope never to come back.

While on Interstate 70, I was next to a truck carrying cows. (Forgive the corniness of this part). I was passing the truck for the next 40 minutes, not really, but it seemed like it. Time moved slowly. While passing the truck, one of the cows was staring at me. It really was, and the sun was glinty off his eye. At least it seemed like it. In what seemed like hours but was probably less than 30 seconds, during that time, something happened, and everything changed. Rule 91 took on new meaning. Somewhere along the way, I walked away from my self-doubt and my self-hatred.

I pulled over at the next gas station, filled the car with gas, used the bathroom, and bought a real Coke and Hostess orange cupcakes; and then, I smiled from my heart. Instead of walking away from hope, I needed to walk away from the self-doubt and self-hatred that I was allowing to cloud my hope. I had spent years letting the negative dim the positive, and I was done. There was a big crack in my armor, and I could see sunshine, and it was warming my heart, giving it color, and bringing me back to life, back to me. The next 22 hours in the car were a blur. I drove straight through, only stopping to use the restroom and get gas. I sang at the top of my lungs for most of that 22 hours, and I smiled and laughed and smiled some more. For the first time in years, I didn’t have a headache, and my body didn’t ache all over. When I got home, I was flying high. I had so much to write in my journal. I wrote for hours.

I really wanted to talk to my friend and let him experience the person I used to be before he knew me, the person I always wanted to be, the real me. As soon as I talked to him, I said, “I was really emotional the whole drive, and I still am.” I was ready to explode with excitement. Unfortunately, something came up, and we didn’t get the chance to talk further. Thanks to a busy week, we didn’t get to talk. All week I was going crazy. I was high as a kite, but I had no outlet for all of these emotions. They were riding on the surface of my skin. My senses were on red alert. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I literally could not sleep. I probably had about 7 hours total since Sunday.

I am not sure how other people feel emotions, but here’s how mine work. I tend to feel all emotions at the same time. When I get outraged, right under the surface of that anger is sadness. Ask anyone. When I get angry, I always cry. This was a horrible trait to have at work when people made me mad. When I am really sad, I am full of intense love and kindness right under the surface. When I am extremely happy, guilt is right underneath. I can never feel just one emotion. On my happiest days, I have felt so guilty that I start to feel sadness. My close-knit emotions have caused me to ruin my best days with anger and made me cry while yelling at a horrible coworker. So this week, my emotions have been all over the place. I have cried at commercials and the Olympics. I cried while I read my book. I have laughed out loud watching tv, and that is way out of the norm for me. I decided that this weekend I would go on a tough hike and listen to loud music and meditate and release the excess emotions.

Unfortunately, last night I let my emotions out in an unhealthy way. I read a text incorrectly and immediately went to find the self-doubt and self-hatred and put them back in my heart. We all know what happens then. I become defensive and hyperbolic. I make the proverbial mountain out of a molehill. As I became consumed by fatalism and self-doubt, I allowed myself to put up my walls and instead of saying what I wanted to say or the things I really needed to say. I wasted time and I built a wall and I made myself small. After it was too late to take it all back, I realized what I had done. Why do I insist on making myself small? Why do I continue to think I am less? Why don’t I ever fight for what I want? Why do I always yield to others? For the first time, I was able to see what I had done to myself almost immediately, well, more like 2 hours too late. As I cried out more emotions, I realized nope, not this time. Rule 91, leave the self-doubting, self-hating, small Theresa behind; and don’t look back.

Once I decided that I will stay true to who I am and who I want to be, my warm heart and happy tears were back, and the sun was coming through new cracks in my armor. I will embrace the hope I despised. I will have hope for a better tomorrow, hope for happiness, hope for joy, hope for everything. The more hope, the easier it will be to leave behind self-doubt and self-hatred. For the first time in many years, I finally see the sun rising again. I am happy to feel like me again. I’m sad to have let my own weakness to be small to get the best of me again last night. But this sadness, I know, is temporary because I am watching the sun rise higher as hope grows bigger.

According to Gibbs’ Rule 91, “when you decide to walk away, don’t look back.”