❤️-Day

I am going to avoid all the stores for the next 15 days. I remember doing the same thing last year. This is the time of year the aisles are stocked with red and pink and hearts and love! Cards promising forever. Always and forever, what a lie. That's the lie I bought into, the lie I believed with all my heart. The lie that left it shattered!

I know some of you will relate. The pain that accompanies a person when they have been betrayed by the love of their life.

                     

Those colors of love everywhere, but you don’t feel the love you just feel alone. You avoid looking people in the eye. That has been the hardest thing for me, actually looking people in the eye. I try and avoid it at all cost. 

I can’t even look in a mirror because all I see is an empty shell of who I once was. The many times spent dry heaving and throwing up over the truth of all of it. 

The ache in your heart in the morning and the fear at night.  The deep pain you don’t know how to describe to others who haven’t lived it. Opening the scriptures an the questions that fill your head. Sitting in church listening to talks on family and marriage is one of my deepest sorrows and pain. 

Don’t even get me started on all the love songs on the radio. I couldn’t listen to it for months just drove in silence, which I rare for me. I can’t stand the sound of the road.  You just feel numb. 

  The words that have been spoken, that shattering of your heart and the betrayal is not a reflection of you or how the Savior loves you. 

Rejection is painful, it’s Brutal. It makes you feel like you don’t matter. That your nothing.

God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son.
I know the Savior died on the cross for me, I know he has watched every tear and heard every sobbing prayer. He felt my hurting. He knows every emotion I feel.

                                                 

That love is better than any card, flower, or Chocolate, the colors of love. He will never discard you for someone else, he will never lie to you or betray you. Letting his love feel your heart when you feel like hiding. He knows you, he hears you, and he wants you to feel LOVE. 
WHY? 
BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU!!!

  

NATIONAL NOTHING DAY

When I woke up, 3:00 am, and I knew what day it was I knew this date, it will forever be ingrained into my Shattered pieces. Today was the day I knew that something was off something big. We had argued, and I thought that would be the end of it we would both say what we felt and then we would find a way to solve the issue like we had so many times before. This time it was different. Me inside of me, screaming and kicking and trying to get out. She sensed what was coming. She had been trying to convince me it was coming long before this day, January 16th. I felt uneasy. I knew something wasn't right, but I couldn't pinpoint anything because I didn't want to have to listen to her because if she was right, I knew it would destroy me. I knew what it would do and the damage it would cause, or so I thought because it was much bigger than I could have ever imagined.

Today I tried to avoid it. I wrote a whole other post after that 3 am wake up. I tried to step away from the memory of this day I decided to live in the reality that none of it happened that I could make it all go away if I ignored it.
I had not realized what was going to come. I went about my day trying not to write the date because I felt as if it would trigger me the me I fight to keep hidden the one that will cry. Then it happened an innocent moment that would suck the breath out of me and would leave me speechless.
As I sat working at my desk trying to accomplish all that was stacked in my pile a woman walked up, I looked up from the computer and said hello, then the words I didn't want to hear escaped her lips.
 "How is your husband?"
 I am sure the shock on my face said it all. I had been asked this question many times and the reason I didn't venture out very much in the beginning because it would be, I haven't seen your husband. I would smile and nod and then escape to cry. I haven't had this moment happen for quite a while, and I wasn't expecting, and I sure as heck wasn't prepared for it. There it was a reminder of what today was. I could not escape it.
I looked around to make sure she wasn't talking to someone I couldn't see even though I knew I was the only one she was speaking to her.
I politely said, "I don't have one."
her reply, " yes you do" with a smile on her face as if I was lying.
The inside me wanted to shout at her and say no I am pretty sure I don't he left me nearly two years ago for a 23-year-old. I knew this lady didn't need to hear the reason I dint have a husband, so I just replied. "I am pretty positive I don't have a husband.
She looked embarrassed now and said, oh I thought he was sick, and that's why you stopped teaching. All the ladies in the pool were talking about it. I said no, sorry, I don't have a husband.
This sweet lady apologized and walked away.
I know she had no idea what she had just done; she attempted to show kindness to my sick husband left me in a mess. And the effect that statement would have on me this day. The tears started to trickle down my face like they had many times in the past when the comment would stop me in my tracks and leave me feeling defeated.
I stood from my desk, hoping to escape before anyone could see them. I walked to my car, started it, and drove away from that moment, away from that comment. What I couldn't escape was me and the tears flowing and the feeling that dark feeling where my lungs feel constricted. I thought I had worked on this and that I would ignore it today. Now I couldn't. That comment had stirred up a lot of stuff, stuff I wasn't prepared for today. I wanted answers to that one question that nobody can give.
WHY DID MY HUSBAND DO THIS?
Dammit, I want that answer. I have to live in the reality of this, another choice that did so much damage. I at least deserved that answer to why he did all of this. Created this reality, the one I have to accept.
Yes, this is work from therapy here trying to accept the reality I live in, This is where I am at, and this is what I need.
I need to acknowledge the day and face it. This is where I am and the fear of change at what it can affect. I don't have to be healthy or courageous today, I can wear my emotions on my sleeve, and it's okay to grieve. I thought I had become a good griever over the last two years, but today as I share pieces of me, I can break down and ask to step away from the moment, and ask what do I need? I not going to pretend today isn't a sense of sadness and the loss of my husband.
I have learned I am going to have good days, and I am going to have bad days like last Thursday, and all I wanted to was shut down and give way to the darkness. I will accept that it's not going to go away even if I pretend it not there or that day isn't the one that is the beginning of the change of it all.
Life will never be the same, and all I can do is to continue to be authentic.
So today sucks, I will continue to do the work on the days that suck, and I will continue to rely on the lord that he has me. That this is precisely what he wants me to continue to do.

This is 40?

Today I woke up that 3 am hour still plagues me that nightmare, and my heart hurt that squeezing pain in my chest that makes me want to throw up. This day two years ago, If this is what ’40s looks like I want a do-over, I wanted the same thing last year. Time has carried on 2018 I don’t know what to say about it. In 2011 I vowed never to have a year that shattered again, but here it was 2018 in all her glory. January 3rd isn’t just a birthday; it’s the day I am reminded that my voice didn’t matter that my one request for that day was forgotten. 2018 was the year the Grande pin was pulled and left at my feet. Humiliating, shattering, painful, humbling, haunting year of my life. That 2018 40th Birthday memories are what brings that pain in my chest on this 3 am sudden wake-up. 

New Year and Birthday so close the time to reflect upon one's life. The memories of the betrayal, which were buried but not gone, have again resurfaced. It's hard to believe that after two years, the pain is still fresh. The memories that won’t fade the ones that stick with you even when you run from them the one you try to get so far away from, but that 3 am nightmare just won’t let you. 2020 and I still want a redo. Because this isn’t what I thought ’40s would be. 

I have learned a lot of things in the last two years a lot of hard truth about life none more shattering than the previous 2 years, truths I didn’t want to know, secrets that were being kept for years, facts that kept me frozen with fear. Dreams and trust shattered.

It all lays at my feet. I can see the shattered pieces moments of my life that I can’t look at. They don’t fit; I can’t find all the pieces because I deal with all the lies. I can see the good memories mixed in with the bad, but even they have been tainted with the words it was all fake, I faked it all. 

That phrase let go. Yes, let's take the past 25 years of pieces lying at my feet, sweep them up and toss them away. Try it see how easy it is to take the life you lived, loved, and sweep it all up and throw it. I dare you to see how easy it is because when you toss it, you will also lose a lot of people along with it. Twenty-five years of relationships vanish right along with it people you loved.

Yes, the shattered pieces of me lying at my feet, what do I do with them step over and forget they ever existed? That may be easy for some. Maybe it’s easy for you to walk forward and never look back, pretend it never happened. If I have learned anything in therapy is that it’s not in my makeup, it’s not who I am. I don’t just toss away what I loved and cherished I try to fit all the pieces back together, and I am working on finding the pieces of me scattered around put them back together. There is no such thing as a whole anymore because I gave pieces of myself away to others, and all I can do is learn to find the pieces of me that aren’t shattered and to love them. It’s a work in progress.

I learned in the last two years, and the lord gives you some of the most amazing people to help love the pieces lying at your feet. The pieces that are sharp and cut, the pieces that aren’t lovable, the dark pieces, the empty pieces, the ones that look and feel flawed, the little ones that can only be seen for a small moment. He has given me people that helped me find them and helped me take a step forward even if I am going to turn around and take ten steps back they have helped me with that one step forward anyway. Held my hand, been a source of relief a shoulder or lap to cry in a hug that means more than any other gift in the world. He hasn’t left me alone, and if you are standing in your shattered pieces, he won’t leave you alone either. He is there, and he sends you people. Some love me even when I can’t love myself. I can assure you that he is always there proud of the one step forward the inch or the one shattered piece you pick up and glue back together. He knows the path he knows the future even when you're frozen in fear. He can lead you, and he will send you people.