Ode to a butterfly...

So...good things have happened.

I have a new job that I love. I'm feeling genuinely happy for the first time in nine months. I'm ridiculously proud of myself for doing things I didn't think I could do.

I'm scared too. I'm scared that this is all a mirage and that I will slip back down into that black hole again. I'm scared that the smallest misstep will cause me to lose my grip on all that I've managed to create.

I really do feel like that donkey. You know, the one in the parable that goes that this donkey fell into a hole and the townspeople couldn't get him out. And he was old and injured anyway. So they start throwing dirt in the hole, thinking that they will bury him and he will lay down and die. But instead he starts climbing on the dirt that they are throwing in the hole, until he is able to climb out.

That's me. I so wanted to just lay down and die. I wanted to wrap grief around me like a blanket. And I did, in the beginning. For nearly a month I was just immobile, unable to function, unable to eat, unable to believe that I was expected to just go on living even as my insides had surely shriveled up and died.

But somehow-and I don't really know how, except that the girls just had to have a functioning mother-I managed to emerge enough that I could get up. That I could eat, even if everything did taste like sandpaper. That I somehow was not going to die of a broken heart.

Grief has become a friend. I welcome him every morning, wondering what we will be feeling today. Lately though-lately I've been feeling happy. Contented. Proud.

I have done so many things in the past nine months that I just did not think that I could do. I have learned so much about myself, which sounds so clichéd that it pains me to write it. But the thing is, the person that I was, she was a good wife. Truly. And her husband was going through something that was painful and her every thought, her every action, it was in a hope that she was doing the thing that would fix it, that would make it better.

Letting go of that-letting go of the idea that Nick is no longer my husband but just my friend-it has been sad, and hard, and freeing. I will always care about Nick, of course. But I have taken that weight off my shoulders. And in its place I have started to learn things that I always wanted to learn but didn't think myself capable.

I learned how to fix my hair the way I always wanted it to look. This seems stupid, I'm sure. But I was always just a girl who threw her hair in a ponytail. My hair finally looks the way it's always looked in my mind's eye.

I exercise a lot. I push myself. I have dreams about what my arms and abs will look like-and for the first time in my whole life, I honestly think that maybe they might look that way eventually.

And I reached out and got a job that I wanted with all of my heart. I say this a lot, but I am blessed.

This past weekend has been another huge step in this grief process for me. Because I spent a lot of time with Nick and Jenifer and I did not feel sad. I felt light. I felt content. I felt like I am in the place that I need to be. And luckily, that place seems to be a place where we are all friends. Which has been my goal since forever. I know that many people wouldn't feel that way, and I don't judge any one else's path. Divorce looks different for everyone who has lived it. Grief takes a different shape for everyone who feels it.

Grief is not linear, no matter what we might imagine. Grief skips around, makes you feel sad and haunted and unable to breathe. Sometimes. Grief is still with me. Tucked away like a childhood blanket, ready for me to remember some silly thing that happened eleven years ago. Or six years ago. Or yesterday.

But I also feel healing. Like the sinew is restructured, like the scar is slowly disappearing. In the end, I feel whole. I feel changed. I feel like the person that I always wanted to be.

If I fall apart, it's okay. Because I know that I have lived through what I was sure would kill me. I will make mistakes. I'm not fully healed yet. Maybe I never will be. I don't know, I've never done this before. The days are long and there are surely shadows still to absorb. Memories still to surface. But there is joy. There is joy.