Literary Journey to the Heart of Me

First of all, I have to admit that my motivation for the picking up the book I am currently reading has less than pure influences.

It was the book that my ex told his ex through a facebook message that I hacked into (oops..but don't worry we shared each others' passwords) that he was reading in the message in which he also informed her that he would be ending our engagement in the next week, that would be four days before I got the same news.  The book is entitled Eat, Pray, Love, and despite the fact that my motives for procuring this book last night at Barnes and Nobel were less than pure, all I can say about the twenty chapters of the first part of the book I have read so far is WOW!!!  I feel like in so many instances this woman is speaking straight from my heart as she speaks so nakedly honestly from her own.  Let me share a few of my highlights thus far:

"I don't want to be married anymore.  I don't want to live in [a] big house.  I don't want to have a baby."

"[A]s  my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant.  I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didn't happen.  And I know what it feels like to want, believe me.  I know well what desire feels like.  But it wasn't there...And every month when I got my period I would find myself whispering furtively in the bathroom: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me one more month to live..."

"I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life--so why did I feel like none it resembled me?  Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty[?]"

"He'd already been watching me fall apart for months now, watching me behave like a madwoman (we both agreed on that word), and I only exhausted him.  We both knew there was something wrong with me, and he's been losing patience with it.  We'd been fighting and crying, and we were weary in that way that only a couple whose [engagement] is collapsing can be weary.  We had the eyes of refugees."

"God waited me out.  I pulled myself together enough to go on: 'I am not an expert in praying, as you know.  But can you please help me?  I am in desperate need of help.  I don't know what to do.  I need an answer.  Please tell me what to do.  Please tell me what to do.  Please tell me what to do...And so that prayer narrowed itself down to a simple entreaty--Please tell me what to do --repeated over and over again.  I don't know how many times I begged.  I know that I only begged like someone who was pleading for her life."

"I would say if you really want to STOP knowing someone, you have to divorce [obviously it was just an engagement] him.  Or her...I believe we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually  incomprehensible strangers who ever lived."

"Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over himself, fully dressed, shoes and all.  He's going to make me sleep with him again tonight, I just know it."

"When you're lost in the woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost.  For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you have just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now.  Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore."

"When a friend complimented my new look, all I could say, grimly, was, 'Operation Self-Esteem--Day [Effing] One.'"

"What I write in journal tonight is that I am weak and full of fear.  I explain that [Anxiety] and Loneliness have shown up, and I am scared that they will never leave..I'm terrified that I will never really pull my life together."

This is where I am in the book so far.  There is much to digest as I read through this woman's journey that seems to so closely mirror mine at this stage of the book.  I'm intrigued, to say the least, to see where her journey takes her physically and more importantly emotionally and spiritually, as I am also intrigued to see where my complimentary journal also takes me.  I can say that I can't honestly see him finishing a book such as this, but I've been wrong about things concerning him before.  I do hope he can go on a journey of his own along the path of self-discovery and discovery of the heart; however, this journey that I find myself on of literary and spiritual proportions is mine and no one else's.  The valleys are more than likely going to be low and the mountain tops will be contrastingly high.  There will be tears, and there will be pain  But there will also be moments of clarity and moments of peace in the midst of what feels like a raging storm.