I've been on my own for 6 months...half of a year. Wow. I am stunned and awed at this.
I've decided this will be the last monthly update I title by months. I'm no longer going to define my life by how many months I've been on my own, but will simply write blogs as I used to, by subject or thought or whatever catches my fancy at the moment.
When I began this particular blog post, I went in search of an image that seemed like "healing". What does healing look like? I almost chose a heart with band-aids all over it...but then I saw this picture and I thought, this, this is what healing looks like. All waves and curves and color and flowers.
I still have days where I'm a puddle of goo, when I'm on the floor crying my guts out...but they are fewer and much farther in between. I have come to recognize the path my mind starts down that leads me to that place, and I've gotten better at catching myself as I begin the downward slide.
It is still often 2 steps forward/1o steps back, but there are definitely steps forward. I still question myself, what I thought, what I believed, what I chose, why I chose it. But that, too, is becoming a lesser preoccupation because I know in my most rational being, that that is an utter waste of time. No matter what one WAS thinking, one cannot now unthink it/unchose it. One can, however, look at it and PERHAPS see things now that one didn't see then, and adjust their thinking in accordance.
My goal is to paint a life canvas of love and compassion. To learn to trust myself again (if I ever really did). To fill my life with family and friends. And to spend more time in nature, nurturing the very core of my being.
Thank you to all of you who have stood by me and watched me struggle through this, even those of you who never understood they whys. And for that one or two of you that truly DO understand the why, a special, special thank you. In a relationship where the world didn't understand, you are truly a blessing.
Ok, then. On with my life.
Five months ago I moved out of the house and fell into an emotional morass that threatened to engulf me. I've had some bad days...I've had some VERY bad days (the last one being April 17th when I cried for about 10 straight hours, had to leave work early because I totally fell apart, and eventually cried myself to sleep)...I've had some good days, I've had some VERY good days, the one that I think of most recently was Tuesday, May 7th, the first time I've thought that life was good in MONTHS.
I'm coming through it, I'm surviving, and after survival comes thriving as I grow and adapt to my new life...as I create what I want my life to be on the blank canvas of my new life, starting with a new job that pays better and is a tad less stressful, which I begin on May 16th.
May it only get better...
I've been on my own for 4 months now. Some things are going swimmingly. Some things are emotionally difficult to the max. Some days I stumble, some days I fall. I always claw my way back up, though, and stagger on. I know this will get easier...I know this with my rational brain. But my heart? My heart thinks I've died most days...
I repeat this litany: I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...
I kissed a man...and my life was forever changed...
I had been married twice. I had loved, I thought, much. But this relationship unlocked a side of me I never realized I had. It was volcanic, passionate...It obstructed my ability to see much that I should have seen.
It was long lasting. We've been together 22 years through so much good and bad and pain and joy. And it endured. A volcanic flame of passion that defined me and molded me and focused me.
Even after "the confession" the passion remained. We separated and the loneliness was so intense, I was sure I'd never survive the rest of my life without him. I cried a lot. I longed to go back, to go home. I thought of all the ways I could have "done/been" more. Different makeup/hair/clothing. More sexual/lose weight/talk more/talk less. On and on the endless litany in my head even though I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that none of those things would have made a smidgen of difference because his passion had waned many years ago.
And then, the man made a deal with "the woman" in the South...and I was almost consumed with anger. For days the anger burned. For days I could not have looked him in the eyes...
And when the anger left me...I looked around and all I saw was ash. The ash of our life. The ash of my consuming "in love" for him. The ash of my passion.
I was both bereft, and liberated. Don't get me wrong, I still love my husband and I probably always will. But that being in love passion that drove me for 22 years, didn't survive the inferno. I can look at him now and he's just a person.
It's hard to explain this unless you've been in a relationship where the passion burned hot and long and always. I couldn't look at him without desiring him. I can now. That is why I am bereft. I feel I've lost the magical something that defined us...
But it's also liberating. Because NOW I can finally be OK with moving on. I can build a life without looking back in longing. Without crying every time we have contact and nothing emotional happens.
I am free...
It's getting easier to be alone. I've learned to cope with the lack of noise and to create my own noise when I need it. I'm more comfortable in the apartment. I've come to grips with my inner noise, my struggle to understand myself, my relationship and my relational failure. Those are some interestingly intense inner conversations, often journaled out to keep me sane...
I brought home a second kitten to keep my Ms. Kitty company while I work 9 hour days (sometimes 10 hour days). After a life always with MooCow, she was kind of listless, so Maggie has joined our household.
My birthday is this week, and I'm having a gathering, an open house from noon to 9PM so that people I know can wander through on their way to/from places and share a cupcake and some tea. I haven't had a birthday "party" of any kind since I turned 40, and before that not much since I was 21. I picked out a tea party invitation that suited me and I have teacup and teapot cupcake toppers for the cupcakes. I wanted to throw a Tardis themed party, but I couldn't find enough Tardis themed party stuff to do so. I special ordered stamps with teapots on them!!! And they were blue!!! I was so elated! Ahh the little things...
Four weeks...it's been four weeks. It feels like a lifetime.
The quiet no longer jangles my nerves as much as it did. I play a lot of music and the cat helps.
The apartment is coming along. Most of the big stuff has been figured out and I've combed thrift stores on and offline to supplement the furniture I brought with me so that I create a "homey" feel.
I look back at that picture of my kitchen table in the house that I loved and my heart aches...but I don't live there anymore...that kitchen table sits in a different room now, where I play games with family and friends when they come visit. I rarely eat there. Who wants to sit at a big table alone? Only when family/friends come to visit. Then the kitchen is full of the hustle/bustle of "family" and the table is where we all gather and talk and laugh. I like those times...
The cat is still twitchy. Not "every little noise" anymore and not the growling she did at first (I swear I thought I'd brought a puppy with me and I wish I'd recorded her growling it was so funny), but that every big move I make/every loud noise outside jumpy kind of twitchy. At the house she often slept on my hip, now she ALWAYS sleeps on my hip.
We are getting there, she and I...slowly but surely, whether we want to or not.
Just a month ago I lived in a house with sounds...The husband and two grown boys, their myriad of friends running up/down/in/out. Playing music, watching Rifftrax and Anime...Laughter coming from the basement all the time.
Now I live alone with my cat. No amount of music played can mimic the noise I lived in.
In most empty nesting times of life, the kids go off and the husband and wife stay in the house and adapt, together, to the lesser noise. Leave it to me to do it all discombobulated and be the one that left the nest alone.
I'm not sure I will EVER get used to the lack of noise....
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