The sun is shining, Michael is singing “I Want You Back” through my speakers…it’s that time of year.
And it’s finally (almost) time for me to declare five years.
You know how cancer survivors hold five years sort of out there, as a goal? Well, I have held five years out there since all of this began. There is no real secret to five years, I know. Wait long enough and time will elapse and that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But here we are.
I’ve had many, many revelations about all of this recently, and I don’t know for certain if it is a matter of how much time has elapsed, or if it’s been this season of forced downtime with my precious girls, or if it’s an emergence of a new outlook on life- or, most likely, it’s all of those things.
Life just now is really right where I want it to be. As always, I wish that I could hold that girl from 5 years ago and tell her that. It all turns out okay. Better than okay. Promise.
(I honestly don’t know if this is interesting to anyone at all besides me. I realize that most people in this world move through things quicker than I do. Heavens, I know people who have been widowed who have remarried in the time that I have been slogging along in this. Which is fabulous for them, and I truly hope for all of the world to find love, and I’m here for all of it. It’s just not my truth.)
Here’s the deal: in the beginning (I have said this before), I simply assumed that life would lay itself out like a romantic comedy that I was unaware I was living inside. If Nick wasn’t the right person, then right person would somehow appear and all of life would fall into place. Not right away, of course. I spent a nice long year inside of searing grief, and then another year emerging slowly from that. Slowly beginning to notice men noticing me, and for a moment enjoying that. I dated a bit. I promised myself that at the least I would have a new friend in the one person that I went out with for a while, and that has completely turned out to be true.
But here’s my revelation in this year that I promised myself release- I’m happy with life the way that it is. I’m here for movie nights with my girls, for meals with my parents, for texts with my sister about books. I love being the one to make all of my own decisions about my house, about my paycheck-these are things that I take for granted now, but that it took time to get used to.
This time of heightened anxiety in the world has brought to the surface some gunk that I never properly dealt with at the time of my divorce. In the beginning, life was about surviving (truly). There was so much to mitigate then, and now there is space and time and healing and so coming to revelations about what someone breaking your trust and what that has created in its wake- it’s all easier to deal with. And, for me, it’s important that I’m dealing with it on my own.
Why does any of this matter? I don’t know that it does. But it’s where I am just now. And I sort of want to shout it from the rooftops- just exactly the same way that I felt when I fell in love with Nick Johnson and I wanted the entire world to know. I want the world to know that five years after life fell all to pieces at my feet, I’m feeling independent and strong and at peace.
Life has worked out just exactly like it was supposed to. Promise.
I used to be lunatic from your precious face
I used to be woebegone and so restless nights
My aching heart would bleed for you to see
Oh! But now...
(I don't catch myself bouncing home
Whistling buttonhole tunes to make me cry)
No More "I love you's"
A language is leaving me
No more "I love you's"
A language is leaving me exiled
No more "I love you's"
Changes are shifting me outside the words
-The Lover Speaks
