The Feeling Of...

Nearly every morning over the past 6 months, I had woke to another day God had given me to live, but wanting - in a way - to die. I am not suicidal, but the pain I felt so so incredibly smothering that the only time I felt free was when I was asleep - unconscious to the world and the emotions and the realities of all that was going on. I would wake up and be immediately reminded of my life and the mess it was and the devastation I felt. I felt empty, useless, unloved, unwanted and unworthy. It took so much strength for me to even think about getting out of bed - but I did. Each and every morning I got up, took a shower, did my hair and make-up and got dressed. I would then take my dog for our morning walk and look to the east and with every effort I could muster thank God for another beautiful sunrise and another day I got to live. I would walk around my apartment complex thinking about my now ex, the day before me and wondering when things would change - when my life would change to the better and I could once again feel alive instead of dead.

Well, last week I started noticing that that emptiness that I was feeling when I would wake was finally subsiding! I thought, okay is the only temporary? I don't think so, because even though I still don't want to get out of bed, it's not because I am feeling sad anymore! It's only because I want to sleep more! It is amazing! It feels so good to wake and feel like living! I really feel like a huge burden has been lifted off of my shoulders and I feel free. No more "what ifs." I am ready to see what my future holds and excited to see what God has in store for me.

I am excited about the holidays and all that come with them. Even though I don'thave tons of money, I want to decorate and bake and shop for all of my family! The smell of cinnamon in the air and Christmas lights decorating the trees is so nice and warm feeling. I am excited and I hope that it is just a "putting on a front" feeling. I pray that I truly can face the holidays with joy in my spirit and thankfulness in my heart!

Battle

I am having to battle against some pretty strong emotions today. I just woke up this morning and felt sad. It's not an overwhelmingly sad feeling, but sad none-the-less. I just cry out to God today and ask him to be with me. I need Him and His unfailing love.

I have had a fairly good week post-divorce. All week I had a great sense of calm and freedom and at times excitement when thinking about what my future holds. One thing that I have come to terms with is the approaching holidays. My ex often worked a lot through the holiday's and I didn't get to see him much. We also didn't have huge family traditions on his side of the family. We also didn't have any traditional thing that we did as a couple. We didn't do the Christmas tree or the exchanging of presents. So I feel pretty good and confident that I will make it through the upcoming festivities. I have decided to start my own traditions and the first thing I am going to do is cook and bake a lot for Thanksgiving and buy a Christmas tree! I have a spot all picked out for it in my apartment and my sister (being the incredibly loving soul that she is) bought my my first Christmas decoration - a gold star for the top of the tree! It's perfect!

When I Grow Up...

As time marches on in these seemingly dark days post-marriage, my mind has just been a race of thoughts of "now what?" For 10 years, I filled my thoughts with that of my ex. Where is he? What does he need? What does he like? What does he want to do? Is he happy? Is he mad? Is he sad? He!!! He!!! He!!! It was always about him and what he needed. I focused all of my energies on him and our relationship and our finances and our home and our family. Now, for the very first time as an adult it can be Me!!! Me!!! Me!!! I am not a selfish person. I want to make others happy and focus on their needs, but I have the greatest opportunity that anyone should be so lucky to have. I get to start over - from scratch and look at life with an entirely new set of eyes and mindset. Before, I was focused on a relationship and marriage. Helping it grow and cultivating it into something beautiful that was envied by others. Well, that plant has died (not by any of my doing. I WILL NOT take any of the guilt or shame of my ruined marriage.) I wanted to work on it - he is the one who cheated on me, left me and divorced me.

So now what? What do I want from my new life? What do I want it to look like? Do I want to start dating someone immediately? Do I want to pick up and move to a new city? Do I want to become someone famous? Do I want to be a great humanitarian? Do I want to be a doctor or a lawyer? Do I want to be a beauty queen? A teacher? A police officer? A politician? The sky is the limit for me right now and that is a very intimidating thought. I have never been one with such lofty dreams and goals. I feel driven, but not driven to the point of conquering the world. I want to be happy, but what does my happiness look like? I am not sure.

What I do know is that I feel (at the moment) secure with who I am. I don't want to make any excuse for my likes or dislikes. I shouldn't have to defend that to anyone. For the past 6 months I have felt like just because I go to bed at a reasonable time, then there is something wrong with me. Or because I don't like to drink, then I am a prude. Why can't that just be accepted by those around me. I don't like to drink. Big deal! I am not saying that you shouldn't drink, but I just don't want to and I don't like it!

I am a beautiful young woman, with a great steady head on her shoulders and has morals and values that are hard to find in this world. I have so much to offer, it's just that I need to figure out what it is exactly that I have to offer and start to focus my energies into that.

When I grow up, I want to be a...

D-Day

Well, it's here. "D-day" I have been so lovingly calling it. My divorce is now before a judge and there is no turning back. So, how do I feel about it? I am actually having a good day which is quite the surprise. I am divorced. I no longer have a husband - just an ex-husband who I would really like to forget about. I would like to forget all of the pain and heartache I have endured over the past 6 months and be happy again. It's amazing how someone you would actually trust your life with could injure you so badly, almost to the point of no return. I am very frightened by the thought of letting another into that inner sanctum of me. I am frightened to let someone affect me as my ex did. I trusted him, possibly more than anyone else on this earth. And what did he do with it? Shattered it and left me to pick up the pieces of his mess. How noble of him. How courageous of him. Gee, what a man... and I say this completely saturated with sarcasm. He wasn't a man. He ran away like an injured dog with it's tail between his legs. He couldn't face me or my family. So what does he do? He ignored us! Ran away like the coward he is.

Anyway... enough about him. What about me? Hmmm... what do I want to do? Where do I want to go? Who do I want to be? What do I want? Paris... children... a house... Charleston... to be an author... to be athletic... Not in this particular order, but I have done tons and tons of soul searching over the past months and the bottom line is I am a simple gal with simple dreams, but dreams none the less. I love my family and I have wonderful friends, but what else? I am not really sure. I'll just take "d-day" as an accomplishment because I am not at home curled up in a ball. I am facing the world with an oddly new found confidence. I think "I'm divorced. So what!" I can hold my head high knowing that I did the best I knew how to and now I am moving forward with more knowledge about relationships and people than ever before. Life is a growing, breathing beast and if I am able to survive then I have conqured the it and will help others conquer it as well!

Ahh...

Ahh... hell is finally over. I know my now-ex signed the papers today and all that is left to do is to go before the judge and have it officially stamped into the history books. I am divorced. That is weired. Weired to to see,weird to think, weired to be. Six months ago today he dropped the atomic bomb of his unfaithfulness to an innocent and unsuspecting wife and ever since there has been fallout of epic porportion. How I survived it is beyond all comprehension. As I live and breathe, I thought for sure I would be a mental, emotional and spiritual causality of this historical event that took place. I had always thought that I would, in all aspects of the word, die from devastation if I were ever faced with such an event as an unfaithful spouse. I loved him. I was faithful to him. I honored and respected him. I provided for him. I did the best I knew how to for him. Not being careless with my feelings,but I sigh with a simple thought: "Oh well." I know that with every breath I breathe and every thought I have, I know beyond the great beyond that I did my absolute best to him and for him. What did he do with it? Threw it all away for a moment of passion. I can live with myself. I can move on. I can live a life free from thoughts of guilt and shame. I am free. He is not.



It is not easy. It is a great fight for me to just lift my head off of the pillow in the morning. But I do and I am proud of that very fact. I am a survivor - not survivor of cancer or a disease that doesn't have a cure - I am a survivor of a broken heart. There is a cure for that and that cure is time. Day in and day out. Time is the only cure for this brokenness that is so overwhelming at times I can't even smile and it is tough pill to swallow. There is not instant relief from this pain - although there are brief glimpses of the happiness that once was and will be again.



But when I am able to see beyond is temporary sadness, I see with clear eyes - free from the tears that have so often stained my cheeks - that I am blessed. Blessed with a wonderful family that loves me to the core of my being - beyond all of my faults and imperfections. I sit here watching them from a short distance as we begin dinner time around a table full of wonderful food and a warm fire. The air smells of chocolate chip cookies and a fire flickers and glows in the corner. What more could anyone in this world ask for? I am blessed and I have the love of a Father from above, the support from a great family and friends who call to check in on me and to lend an ear to my words of confusion. I have a great little apartment in a quaint little town, an adorable dog who greets me at the door with love affection, a great job with a boss who has morals and values that are rare to find and a car that is just as cute as me. I am blessed and I realize now more than ever that I have everything I need and so much more.

From Here to Where?

What an amazingly rough, tough and tumble six months it has been. Cheated on, left and divorced all by a man who I thought could conquer the world with his humor and his million dollar smile.

I signed my portion of the divorce papers this afternoon and I had a little bit of emotion come through in the form of tears and cries for help to God, but now I am back at work and feeling more peace rushing through me than I have in a long while.

Ahh... peace.

Feels good.

I am sad and devastate that my once thought "fairy tale" marriage has ended on the guillotine of adultery. Another death of the promise of "forever" to a world so cynical towards a solid marriage that a marriage that lasts 50+ years is an oddity and marriages like mine are a daily special on the menu of life. Even though it seems so foreign to my mind, the fact that my marriage has ended is not as catastrophic as it once was when my grandmother was a young girl of 26 with two strapping young boys by her side and a handsome farmer husband in the fields taking in the harvest. I am the norm.

I hate it! Why is it so easy (and so cost effective in my situation) to get a divorce? I was engaged for two years, planning and re planning my glorious day as a blushing bride. With the wedding rings, the dress, the food, the flowers and the honeymoon it cost nearly $10,000 to get married. It has only taken 60 days and $180.50 of my hard earned money to get divorced plus my ex owes me $1300 to settle out "estate" (which includes an 11-year-old BMW and a dog adopted through the humane society.)

Well, what is done is done and I find myself actually very eager to close this chapter in my life. Why? I guess it has something to do with the overwhelming, at time suffocating sadness I have been flooded with over the past 6 months. I have felt sorrow and remorse as if my ex had actually died, but without any life insurance money to help ease the pain of being alone, abandoned in the world. The fact that he didn't die, but left me for another woman (and I use that term loosely) only compounds the emotions I feel. There has been no closure. He is still alive and, unfortunately, well walking around this world in the company of another while I come to grips with the fact for the first time in my entire adult life I am single. Not dating, not engaged, not married - single.

So, the question is from here to where? Where do I go from here? What do I do from this point on in my life? All of a sudden I do not have any goals or aspirations for myself. Sure, I had them when I was married. We had joint goals, joint aspirations, but now there is nothing. I have the greatest gift anyone should be so fortunate to receive - I get to reevaluated everything in my life and start a new. That is one gigantically intimidating thought, but at the same time is refreshing and awe inspiring.

I really don't know what is next in line for me at this moment. I am just breathing a little sigh of relief, but smothered in remorse for my dead and decaying, once beautiful, marriage. It's going to take awhile to figure things out, but I am looking forward to the new adventure I am about to embark on - single hood. It's going to be one hell of a ride, that's for sure.

Revelation 21:5
He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."