Through the Car Wash and Into the Light

It can feel like your whole self is being scrubbed away when relationships end, leaving you raw and uncertain.

It felt like I was stuck on the conveyor belt, headed into my own private car wash, without a car to protect me. I thought the swaying cloth strips and spinning brushes would tear me apart. Every pass felt like it stripped away something I had clung to, some part of who I thought I was. The water hit hard and cold, the soap stung my eyes, and I could not see the road ahead. I was in the middle of it. I only knew that I was no longer where I had been.

In those moments, it was easy to believe I was losing everything. The familiar faces, the shared laughter, the quiet understandings that once stitched my days together... they unraveled, thread by thread, until I stood there, dripping wet and shivering, unsure of what was left.

But this is what I know now. The brushes that felt so brutal were not tearing me down. They were scrubbing away calcified layers; the cloth strips were polishing me. The sprays that blinded me were washing away the layers of identity that no longer fit. The roaring wind that left me gasping was drying the last remnants of a life that had already outgrown me.

When I finally stepped out into the sunlight, blinking and new, I realized I had not been destroyed. I had been revealed. Underneath all the loss and ache, there was a steadier self waiting. One that could hold sorrow and hope in the same breath. One that did not need to be defined by who stayed or who left.

If you are in the thick of it now, if the brushes are spinning and the water is pounding, trust that there is a road on the other side. Trust that you are not being undone. You are being made ready for the life that is already reaching for you.

Reflection Prompt

What parts of me are being revealed as I move through this season of letting go?

Your Compass Line: I am not breaking, I am becoming.

/s/ A whisper from the self you’re still returning to.

Rex's p.s.

This analogy carried me through two divorces; one pass that was quick and simple, the other that seemed to never end. Now it feels like standing in the open desert after a hard rain, the kind where the storm has passed but the air still hums with what it changed. The smell of creosote after a heavy desert rain. Or wet asphalt if you're residing in the city. There is something holy about being scrubbed down to your bones, about realizing you made it through and are still here, still breathing, still capable of shining. Sometimes the hardest part is trusting that the storm knows what it is doing. But it does. And so do you.

-- Rex

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