I just rewatched "The End of Time" episodes where Dr Who as David Tenant dies and regenerates to be Matt Smith...and I was just sobbing my guts out because this was OUR show and this was OUR doctor and, like him, our marriage suffered a fatal dose of radiation and it was like a shredding, ripping, wrenching death...but then I started thinking that, like The Doctor, I am regenerating, albeit more slowly than the Doctor...
And, like The Doctor, I don't know what I'll look like/be like on the other side...Allons-y!!!
After declaring that I would not be involved in seeking or paying for a divorce I did not want and months of up and down, back and forth, in and out involvement with my husband, things finally came to a head last month...Almost against my will, on Monday, August 12th, I went to the courthouse with him to seek a divorce waiver to help pay the cost of the divorce. He makes too much money, so I knew that I would have to face the judge and beg, and so I did...crying. The judge decided I made just over the poverty level so I was given a 90 day deferment instead of a waiver. I broke down 3 times just getting the waiver and had a small panic attack while leaving the courthouse.
Then on August 19th, I went alone to the courthouse to file the divorce papers. Although I cried again this time, I managed not to have any level of panic attack. They decreed the final hearing will be November 19th at 10:30AM. After I filed, I fled to the river to pray and cry and scream and journal.
I am continuing to survive. Some days I breeze through. This week has been rather emotional and trembly. There is something so very final about filing papers. That life, that 22 years you lived and loved and shared is so irrevocably gone when you walk out after filing papers. I stood, looking at my river, knowing I will truly never ever be the same again. I am profoundly changed. Profoundly bereft. Profoundly sad. I often feel like an utter failure. Somehow I was "not enough". A deep theme that runs through almost every relationship in my whole life. Humans fail. I fail. We all fail. It is a human condition. But it still hurts beyond belief...
And we got on the subject of forgiveness and compassion and how we learn them. I told her I wasn't as compassionate in my teens as I am now and I told her that she and her siblings are a lot of the reason why. I taught them as a mother, but oh how they taught me as my children. And here is the email I sent her this morning:
It is only when you experience the absolute trust and love of a child
that you love unconditionally, no matter what, that you really come to
grasp the essence of GOD. Once you have a child in your life, you can no
longer believe in a judgmental, angry, condemning GOD because if GOD is
any kind of parent, it's a better parent than we are. And we can be
pretty amazing parents.
Parents love and forgive their child of
so many small and huge things. It is through this forgiving that I came
back to being a Universalist, because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt
that there is NOTHING you guys could ever do that would make me stop
loving you and striving for you and praying for you and wanting you near
me. I know parents with children on death row who visit and write and
pray and send whatever gifts they are allowed to send. Parental love
RARELY ever gives up.
And looking at punishment, my punishing you
hurt me as much as it hurt you. I know that GOD could never endlessly
torture people for simply "not having right beliefs" because that's
simply ludicrous. An all-knowing/all-loving GOD would know the very
depth of what a person has been through and would understand the break
that leads them to do horrific wrongs. That's why I know that if there
is a hell at all, it's redemptive. Like a kiln finishing the clay or a
smelter burning off the dross from the gorgeous, precious metal, leaving
the purity of soul on the other side. Only that kind of GOD is a parent
GOD. All other concepts of judgements unto torture are our own puny
minds putting human bitterness and resentment and "he'll get his"-ness
onto our concept of GOD.
So that is why I said, you will lead him and he will lead you all and you all will be better, more compassionate people, for it.
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...
