Essay #4: Every Sinner Has A Future

And every Saint a past.

I’ve never been the type to be embarrassed about who I was pre-awakening. I so openly share my story, the ecstatic highs and the extremely ugly lows.

“My drugs of choice were downers and I discovered that love in the summer before high school after my childhood best friend overdosed on them,” dropped over a casual dinner.

Depressive rebellion was clearly my thing, and I have absolutely no shame in sharing that part of my past.

A step further? For three years, I used to come home after teaching high school kids English all day and cry myself to sleep because I couldn’t save them from their depression: painful realities: absent parents: abusive parents: fucked up school system: the list goes on. Enter pain killers. Enter failing marriage. Enter hope flying out the window.

I literally tried my entire life to be perfect.. graduating college and becoming a teacher at 19. Getting married and attempting to be what my culture would consider a “domestic wife.” And it completely tore me apart. 

I recently posted something about “to release control is to gain control,” and my caption began with “There is no greater way to lose control than to try and control everything.” That was me. For years.

I went from being the kid that learned Arabic, prayed, went to Sunday school, sang Bosnian Muslim songs for hundreds of people. I was so innocent, and so interested in what my people had to teach me. Even when I was being told, “I’d be going to hell because my dad drank alcohol and I’d probably end up like him,” but that’s a story for another day. I was there, and I was doing what I thought I had to be doing; what I was told I had to be doing.

And then, I completely lost my faith. Rock bottom robbed me of every light I had in my life… because it was never authentic to begin with.

But… why? Everything was done with the wrong intention. I was living life to make others happy. I was fighting battles that weren’t mine, instead of focusing on what I could do. I was trying to control every moment, second, inch of my life… and ended up on rock bottom with my life spread around me in a million small pieces, instead.

Failing marriage. Failing immune system. Failing mental and emotional health. Failing career path. Failing faith.

And then; it all clicked for me. I had to experience all of that…. I had to be the bad guy in my own story so that I could come in and save the day.

I had no choice but to repeat the trauma cycles of those who came before me… I didn’t know of any better. (Keep in mind, depressive rebellion… I went in the total opposite direction, which I’ll go into when I talk about how the inner child reacts and why, and what this creates in our adult lives.

Every sinner has a future, and every saint has a past.
I’d be lying if I said a lot of my healing journey didn’t focus on releasing the shame and forgiving myself for the path I fell down. I not only hurt myself, but I hurt others. My inner world was torn apart, and I was horrible to those around me. My husband, my family… For years, my dad told me my depression was “in my head and I could control it.”

I didn’t understand what he meant until I awakened.

I look back now, and as I channel the lives, pasts, and higher paths of the people I meet and clients I gain, I see myself in all of it.

I understand why I had to be the “sinner.” Why I had to fuck up so hard, so fast, so intensely and deeply. Why I had to feel everything I did, and have all the thoughts I had. Why I, then, had to heal myself from scratch, all alone.

Having a million tabs open on my Safari app. Buying self-healing book after journal after Tarot deck after anything I could find to help lead me to answers. Dark Nights of the Soul so scary that I had no idea what I was experiencing.

Until I learned there were others like me out there.. people on a journey to finding their inner light. People wanting to change their stories, and become the “Saint” they were always meant to be.

And it doesn’t mean I don’t make mistakes.. but the LEVEL of my life now cannot even compare to who I was before. The level of self-love, self-control, self-understanding is unmatched, in my eyes.

It has never been seen in my lineage… the conversations I’ve carried out with family members, and the changes I’ve witnessed in those who were so asleep for so long (because they knew no better)… my  ancestors have been waiting for this for centuries.

And so, I wear my past and my mistakes with a bow and arrow. I defend my honor, while recognizing that there is beauty in my pain; because I managed to rewrite my entire story.

Never forget: every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

Today is always a new day to right your wrongs, and rewrite your story. My day was 09/19/2019.  By 09/20/2019, I had decided I was no longer the person I was for 23 years. And by 09/20/2020, I was a completely different Amila with a completely different life.

Anyone can do it. We are meant to.

Always sending love,

Amila Dulic