It Stays With You

Texas has been getting pummeled with repeated rounds of severe storms. And Texans aren’t surprised. Because they’ve come to expect these epic storms. It’s familiar territory.

And once you’ve been a Texan (raises hand), you’ve always been a Texan. With a Texan’s memories and expectations.

These are some pictures of flooding in San Antonio, where I spent my formative years.

From a young age, I was schooled to avoid creeks and low lying areas during any kind of decent rainfall. In driver’s education, we spent the better part of a class learning about the signs of a flooded roadway and the repercussions of ignoring those signs. This was harder than you may imagine, as the literal measuring sticks at flood-prone intersections usually ended up underwater themselves. Even before I started driving, I learned alternate routes through the city that avoided the roads that had a tendency to submerge. That included a stretch of I-10 through downtown.

As a child, I watched with horror the footage of a school bus swept off the road by raging floodwaters, teenagers desperately grasping onto trees awaiting helicopter rescue. When I went tubing down the Guadalupe River every summer, I would stare up, way up, at the high water marks on the trees and rocks. I was stranded by water several times, unable to leave the house or unable to return.

As you can imagine, this stayed with me.

Even though Atlanta’s soil is actually permeable (unlike the slooow-draining limestone under a dusting of dirt that supports San Antonio), I still react defensively when the rain starts pounding. I mentally catalog potentially flooded roadways (a rarity here) and think about the closest high ground.

When my ex (also from San Antonio) and I purchased our first home in Atlanta, we viewed it with Texas eyes and insisted upon full coverage flood insurance even though we were not officially in a flood plain. We didn’t care. We saw that small, tame creek and didn’t trust it. Because we had both witnessed the incredible transformation of trickles into torrents in mere moments. In our ten years there, we never did use that insurance (although the flood map was redrawn a few years before we left and the house was deemed to be in the flood plain. Validation:) )

Of course, we didn’t buy the insurance with the expectation of using it. We bought it just in case. Protection against an unlikely but previously experienced outcome.

I didn’t have cheating, lying husband insurance.

Perhaps I should have. But that was an unexpected storm, one that I had never experienced and never saw coming.

One that I have now experienced.

And it stays with me.

 

Thank you for sharing!

7 thoughts on “It Stays With You

  1. I wasn’t with my betrayer long, (18 months) or married to him (thank God) but it stays with me, 6 months later I still have days where I can’t wrap my head around it. I hope you are healing.

  2. Making Sense from MY Perspective – I have a problem...I see myself through the eyes of my ex...and his glasses are not really the most flattering. I really need to get my own glasses...so this is MY Perspective.
    Making Sense from MY Perspective says:

    Abandonment is a hard pill to swallow, especially when veiled in infidelity betrayal as well.

  3. Oh how it does stay with you! I’m four years out from discovering the long term Double life of my husband of 27 years and 8 months beyond the legal divorce and still have many days of total unproductivity and PTSD flashes. A couple of ideas I try to implement are making a schedule and assessing and celebrating success at the end of the day and consistently reading from the bible. The celebrations of actually accomplishing tasks and the peacefulness of God’s words are helpful. Yet, I don’t see that the lessons learned will ever stop stinging. By the way, I’m over 60…I love the truthfulness of this blog! It’s been spot on with my emotions.

  4. “Hell is other people.” But if marriage teaches us anything, it’s that we can’t change other people. We can only change how we allow them to affect us. I know from exprience too that it stays with you. Thank you for always posting. As a newly separated, this helps.

  5. My ex is still shocked my family wants nothing to do with him. He had an affair, with a licensed professional counselor, abandoned me and 3 boys after our celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary, moved to another city in with his girlfriend. They are still together which stings and it’s been 2 yrs. So much for the “it won’t last” comments. I have been through hell and back with his abandonment only the beginning. I feel like a body builder. I refuse to let his betrayal and devastation of our family snuff out my light. I slowly shine brighter each day. I sold my house we lived in for 10 yrs. and am moving in 2 days. I see this as another new beginning. I am free from years of crumbs, not being seen or heard and his betrayal only validates my unhappiness in the marriage. Keep moving forward, never give up, a new life awaits and it is bright and shiny.

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