Four Years Ago Today

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Four years ago today, I awoke afraid of seeing the man who had abandoned me eight months before. And when he passed me in the courthouse hall, I didn’t even recognize him.

Four years ago today, I was ready for the divorce I never wanted from the man I thought I knew.

Four years ago today, I sat in a courtroom with the man I had spent half of my life with. A man I once considered my best friend. We never made eye contact.

Four years ago today, I looked at his face for any sign of the man I had loved.  I saw none. After sixteen years, he was truly a stranger to me.

Four years ago today, I sat alone in a hallway waiting for the attorneys to decide his fate and mine. Hoping that the judge saw through his lies and would not fall sway to him charms. She didn’t, even asking my husband’s attorney if he was “psycho.” The lawyer could only shrug.

Four years ago today, I cried and shook with the realization that it was all over. It was a relief and yet the finality was jarring.

Four years ago today, I felt a heaviness lift as I cut the dead weight of him from my burden. I believed I couldn’t begin to heal until his malignancy had been removed.

Four years ago today, I laughed when I learned he hadn’t paid his attorney. I had warned the man my husband was a con. Maybe he believed me now.

Four years ago today, I held tightly to that decree, still believing that its declarations had power. I felt relief that he would have to pay back some of what he stole from the marriage. The relief was short lived.

Four years ago today, I took my first steps as a single woman. Steps I never expected to take. The first few were shaky. But I soon started to find my stride.

Four years ago today, I sat around a restaurant table with friends and my mother. A table that had held my husband and I countless times over our marriage. We celebrated the end of the marriage that night. I had celebrated my anniversary there the year before.

Four years ago today, I read my husband’s other wife’s blog for the last time, curious if she would mention anything about the court date. She did not. I erased the URL from my history. It no longer mattered.

Four years ago today, I sealed the piles of paperwork from the divorce and the criminal proceedings into a large plastic tub. As the lid clicked in place, I felt like I was securing all of that anguish in my past.

Four years ago today, I started to wean myself off of the medication that allowed me to sleep and eat through the ordeal. I was thankful it had been there, but I no longer wanted the help.

Four years ago today, I fell asleep dreaming of hope for the future rather than experiencing nightmares of the past.

And now, four years on, I could not be happier with where I am.

Not because of the divorce.

But because losing everything made me thankful for everything.

Because being blind made me learn how to see.

Because being vulnerable created new friendships and bonds.

Because being destroyed made me defiantly want to succeed.

And because losing love made me determined to find it again.

I am happier than I’ve ever been.

And I could not be where I am without four years ago today.

Strength

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Several years ago, I taught eighth grade in the gifted program at a school with a population that qualified our suburban location as “inner city.” I had this one little British boy that year that stood out. John couldn’t have been more than four feet tall, the stack of books in his arms frequently bypassing his eyebrows. He was very quiet and gentle and spoke with coolest accent as he shared his brilliant insights. He was safe on our gifted team; we had many kids who fell outside the norm and this group was very accepting of differences.

But that wasn’t necessarily the case with the rest of the school. I worried for my kids when they were in the halls and the lunchroom with the greater population. I feared they would fall sway to bullies or worse.

But John taught me not to worry.

One day, another student was put in John’s science class for the day as a form of consequence. This student was built like an NFL linebacker and had the temper of a taunted cobra. The science teacher, who had a nature even more gentle than John, sat the punished student at a table in the back of the room.

But the table was already occupied.

A large glass aquarium filled all but a thin, four inch strip of the table. A strip where this student would be completing his work. Inside the aquarium was a large tarantula, that just happened to be crawling on the front wall of the aquarium when the student sat down.

Panicked, he turned to the kid who was closest to him. John.

“Is this thing safe? I hate spiders, man,” his eyes belying the terror just beneath the surface.

“You see those fangs,” said John in a British-tinged whisper, “They use them to pump venom into your body that liquefies your flesh and then they suck out the juices.” This was illustrated with his fingers, just in case the other boy didn’t quite get the picture.

“But don’t worry,” said John with a small smile, “I think the lid will hold.”

And with those words, our little David defeated that Goliath.

For the rest of that year, I saw the bigger boy act in deference to little John in the hallways and in the cafeteria. I’m sure the other students and teachers looked on quizzically, wondering how this diminutive child defeated one of the tougher kids in the school.

What they failed to realize is that strength is not always visible on the surface. That true toughness comes from an ability to reason, use what you have at your disposal and a determination to see the challenge through to the end. And that is something we can all do, even if we can’t see over the load we carry.

 

Courage

Posted on by stilllearning2b

So much of it comes down to courage, doesn’t it?

 

The text from my ex husband read, “I’m sorry to be such a coward leaving you this way.”

That sentence contained the only truth he uttered.

He was a coward, choosing to hide his actions behind lies and then disappear without a conversation.

He was a coward, letting his fears keep him from asking for help or revealing his thoughts.

He was a coward.

But you know what?

So was I.

I never lied.

I never hid my actions.

But I still listened to fear and let it wrap me in its binds.

I was afraid of confrontation. In fact, one of the aspects of my first marriage that I enjoyed is that we rarely ever had confrontation. No wonder. He would lie and I would avoid.

I preferred to avoid anything ugly rather than face it head on. This made me all-too-willing to believe what he told me (Although, in my defense, nobody else knew he was lying either. He was damn good.).

I was so afraid of losing him that I was too cowardly to even consider it becoming a reality.

As though by not looking under the bed, the monster didn’t exist.

Perhaps the greatest gift I received from the end of the marriage was the gift of courage. It wasn’t unlike the journey the lion took to the great wizard of Oz. The cowardly one learned the wizard was an illusion but that courage could be built from within (with a little help from a liquid placebo). And that simply by tackling the journey (with the help of a few friends, of course), he found the bravery he always had and learned that it was characterized by action even in the face of fear.

Courage doesn’t mean you don’t hear fear. It means you don’t listen to everything it was to say.

Courage doesn’t mean that you’re immune to fear. It means it doesn’t paralyze you.

Courage doesn’t mean that you never doubt. It means that you trust yourself enough to make it through.

 

There were obviously many characteristics I considered critical in a second husband.

But one of the most important qualities I looked for was courage.

I needed to know that he would face any potential problems rather than hide.

I needed to know that he would speak the truth even if it was difficult.

And I needed to know that I could do the same.

 

So much comes down to courage.

The courage to see the truth.

The courage to speak the truth.

The courage to trust the truth.

The courage to face the truth.

And to know that it will be okay.

Even if you’re scared.

 

 

 

Our Bodies Lie to Us

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Our bodies lie to us.

They send out hormones announcing an imminent threat to our well being when we take the podium or when we get into an argument with a loved one. Our heart rate increases at the thought of taking a test, and our immune system is compromised because of a noisy environment. We assume we are in danger because our body tells us so.

Our bodies lie to us.

They interpret so much stimuli (internal and external) as a threat and they respond with a cascade of physiological changes and adaptations that are referred to as the flight or fight response. It begins in the amygdala, a rather primal region of the brain that responds to perceived dangers. The hypothalamus taps the adrenal gland on the metaphorical shoulder to let it know to release adrenaline which leads to a release of cortisol, known familiarly as the stress hormone. Your brain doesn’t want to make you stressed; it wants to keep you alive. Click here to read the rest and learn how to outsmart the lie.

Turn Away

Posted on by stilllearning2b

I frequently come across posts or emails written by people in the early aftermath of infidelity. The writings are often angry. Powerfully so, the words slashing across the screen like a serrated blade. You can feel the power, the fury. Each sentence an explosion of outrage towards the unfaithful partner, the affair partner and even circumstances in general.

When I encounter these posts, I want to turn my head in horror.

Not because of the writer.

But because of myself.

I recognize myself in those outbursts, those paragraphs of wrath-tinged keening.

I recollect responding in that same manner. With that same rage blinding my sight and deafening my ears.

I identify with the deep upswell of anger formed by betrayal and a sense of unfairness.

And I want to turn away.

I don’t want to remember that part of myself.

I don’t want to perhaps catch a glimpse of residual fury tucked away.

I don’t want to admit the power that anger held over me.

I see those posts and I remember my early journals, the pen digging deep trenches into the paper, pretending it was gouging flesh from his face. All I wanted to do was to lash out, to make him experience just a fraction of the pain he had inflicted upon me. It was ugly. And it made me ugly.

And I don’t like to face that, to remember the vileness of the anger, any potential for compassion forced out by blind indignation. I don’t like admitting that I wanted to respond to my pain by creating pain in someone else.

And so I want to turn my head. To deny that I once felt that same way.

But that’s becoming what I promised I wouldn’t – someone who writes about divorce only from the scrubbed and polished perspective of the other side.

I want to turn my head in horror.

 

But that’s not honest.

The horror is real.

The anger is real.

And facing it is the only way to lessen its grip.

So I read. And I remember. And I try to reach out.

Because anger is simply pain screaming to be heard.