Thursday, October 19, 2017

Some Fairytale Bliss...



Once upon a time, my life was pretty much what I considered to be a fairy tale.

Fifteen years ago today, I wrote a story about a girl and a boy and a happily ever after.

I spend a lot of time remembering that girl in my head. That boy, too, if I'm being honest. I loved them so. And 15 years ago today, they made these vows that they technically broke 13 years later.

The thing is-and for reasons I can't quite name this seems important to write down-I don't think that we really broke those vows. I still believe in everything that I said that day, everything that day stood for, everything that I wrote inside of a story that can only be written by someone who is wide-eyed in love for the very first time and promising that love will never falter.

The story that we wove together, a story of young love and Betsys and Felicitys, led to a story of broken trust and hurt and more pain than was surely necessary.

But on it goes. The story that is enveloping me now is one of a girl who knows loss. When my marriage fell apart, nothing scared me more than the idea that I would never know a love like that love I had with Nick.

What I didn't understand then was that the fairy tale didn't have anything to do with Nick. It had to do with me. I love who I have become from the wreckage of my divorce. I love stupid, simple things, like that I can make appointments on the phone without having a panic attack, I can budget for the car that I desperately need, and I can say no when I need to say no to something. They are tiny things, but they have taken me my whole life to learn-this person that I'm presenting to the world can be whomever I want her to be.

And she grew in confidence and faith and love. That's my story. Whether we reach the happy ending or not, I will believe.

Monday, October 9, 2017

Mirror Images...




I live in firm belief that I resemble my mother. My mother wholeheartedly disagrees with me.

That, in a nutshell, is our relationship.

My mom is just practically everything to me-she is a mirror of my own heart, she is tangled up with who I am and how I see the world.

These past two years have been hard for us.

My mom wants nothing more than for me to be happy. Watching me hit rock bottom and slowly rise up was easily one of the hardest things that she has ever had to do. She wanted nothing more than to take all of my pain and my shame over the end of my marriage away from me. She did not always approve of how I chose to handle the shattered bits of my relationship with Nick. She misses the old me a lot, by which I think she means the person that used to insist that she knew best and the person who never really faltered in her faith in the happy ending.

What I wish I had the words to say-in a much better way than I'm about to attempt-is that I love my mom not only because she is my mom and she would fight tigers and move mountains and give me her whole world if I asked her to, but also I love her because she gave me the space and the time to fall apart. She didn't want to. She wanted to fix everything, because that is what moms do. I know, I am forever trying to make the path easier for Betsy and Felicity and they are forever forging ahead in spite of my efforts.

It took a while for us to figure out that there just wasn't anything that my mom could do to help me grieve faster. It was frustrating for both of us, feeling like we were talking around each other instead of to each other.

This is hard to write-the experience of being left by someone that you love, someone that you trust with your life, it changes forever your experience of trust even with people that you know love you and care about you and would never, ever leave you alone. I know in my head that Nick's leaving really did not have anything to do with me-it had to do with him and his journey and his truth. But it profoundly changed the course of my life. It's a difficult truth to embrace.

But like all pain, however inflicted, it lessens over time. It's sometimes hard for me to remember that I felt so unmoored. I certainly have taken my time in living with this grief, and there were days that I was most convinced that it was never going to end, but I have reached a point in the past few months where I not only feel contented but I feel delightfully happy. I have somehow grown to love this new person that I have become, and looking back I see, not exactly a method to all of that pain, but...a reason for it? My point is, basically, I never want to live through such hurt again. But the end result of that pain is such a change for the better in what I bring to the world, I can't be anything but grateful that it happened.

My mom and I have slowly been learning how to maneuver around all of this-all of my feelings and all of hers and all of our genuine love for each other. I am blessed to have a mom who hurts so deeply because I am hurting, who never for one moment blamed me for the sadness that swallowed me whole.

I will forever hope to be my mom when I grow up.