Liberation from my personal Egypt...Part I

So here it is the Shabbat before Pesach, the holiday of the Ultimate Liberation and I so desperately need and want to be finally, truly free from so much that all I can think of is Oh My God, Where To Begin?  A new friend who's very wise in the Kabbalic  significance of Passover told me that the impact of the intent lasts for the entire year.  Great.  No pressure. 

More than ever before I feel like my entire future (and may I live to 120 yrs) happiness, my inner peace all rest upon my freeing myself from this emotional and spiritual rollercoaster I've been on for so long.  And to make it even more intense, I am more emotionally raw, more exhausted than ever before.  Seriously.  Ever.  With my father's impending death, along with the sudden passing of Ralph Purdum, a truly amazing and much loved friend of my family at the age of 46, I feel like I am skidding on the handrails of a massive grief crash. 

I am so much in the moment handling everything for my parents, all the details, that I have not allowed myself to really sob--except for when Beethoven's Violin Concerto happens on the radio--- for such a long time as my Dad's days now pass slowly, excruciatingly, into night. Each day I am in the thick of it trying to at least make sure decisions are made now to somehow make it easier for both my Dad and my Mom to bear.

And so I hold back me.  It's what I do, it's what I've always done--there was no room to need nurturing as a child--- and it's only what I know and it's what I need to let go now if I am to be truly liberated from my personal Egypt, my tyranny of my self constructed "Shoulds" of how I should or should not be.

My fear of being fully, gloriously, emotionally human is the capitol city of my Egypt. (And of course I know the main river, of tears in this case, really is called Denial.) I am not comfortable with ALL of me, especially the part that has needs.  The part that is needy sometimes. The part that is vulnerable. The part of me that hurts so badly right now and desperately needs to be held while I cry and slobber over someone's shirt as I wail and let all this go.

So, instead I become defensive, sarcastic, snarky and way too macho for even my faux Xena stance.  My walls go up and I do my best to drive people away lest they find out that I'm a really strong but  also fragile woman.  I know I give off that strong woman vibe, that Knight that rescues, and that's truly, a really accurate and good part of who I am, but I am also gloriously infuriatingly human, and that's the part that needs to run into the Red Sea as it parts (or doesn't) without fear of drowning in the crashing waves of my own tears.