I was a fast runner...but not fast enough to outrun the guilt

After answering a post on another thread a memory just came flooding back to me.

I was about 10 or 11 I think. I can't remember the details of what was happening, but my P dad was set to beat on me. And I took off running out the house, through our backyard into the neighbor's backyard with him chasing me.

I kept running out the front of the neighbor's yard and down the street. He stopped somewhere in the middle of the neighbor's yard.

I was fast.

And what I just realized right this minute remembering this, is that I felt guilty. I felt guilty that I'd made him run. I felt embarrassed for him that a grown man with legs twice as long as mine couldn't catch me.

Wow, that was some good conditioning, that was.

He was going to beat me and I felt bad for him.

Following that memory another one came, well I have no actual memory of the running, but I do recall the lead up to it.

We were on a family trip to Florida - a few days drive. I was three and my brother was four. We were, as siblings do on long journeys, squabbling in the backseat. What I remember is my dad pulling into a store parking lot and my mom saying she was going in to buy a fly swatter to beat me with (me, not my brother, but that is a story for another day). That's where my memory ends, but according to her, as she came out of the store with the fly swatter in her hand, I opened the car door and took off running across all 8 lanes of the interstate. She says miraculously all the cars in both directions came to a screeching halt. Apparently, she was so thankful I wasn't killed, that I didn't get beat with the fly swatter.

There are at least two lessons in these stories. The first is that at just three years old I had a built in self-preservation instinct that kicked in that day. It kicked in again at 10 and 11. Somewhere from my late teens (first P) going forward, I stopped listening to that inborn protection. That instinct that says RUN at the first sign of trouble.

I've got it back now, but wow there were a lot of years in between I failed myself. I failed to protect me, to love myself enough to run.

The other lesson is that we never need feel guilty about protecting ourselves, doing what's best for us. We instinctively know what that is, and yet we fail to listen to it time and time again.

For those of you struggling to break free of dangerous toxic relationships, please find that inner voice, that instinctive self-protection mode and listen to every sound it makes, no matter how quiet it is right now, no matter how ingrained the conditioning has become, no matter how hard you have to strain to hear it.

I bet if you really listen to it, it's telling you to RUN. Run far and fast and leave the guilt behind! There is no need to feel guilty for running from the (figurative or literal) beatings and towards safety, peace and a happiness you can't even imagine right now. And yes, you might even need to navigate 8 lanes of obstacles to do it! But, it's so worth it! It's what your inner voice has been trying to get you to do all along. Now is the time to listen!

Shh, can you hear it???

Love Willow xo