Breathe

                 
It sounds so simple, RIGHT? Yet when you feel like the wind has been knocked out of you, breathing can seem like the hardest thing in the world to do.
After him leaving and realizing or trying to understand this was my new reality, I would do this funny thing.
I would write, and it wasn’t the first time. In  2011 I did the same thing, and I wrote this in 2013 when I knew I had healed from the wounds of infidelity. It had taken two years, but these were my words after fighting back to a new normal.
I was happy with that new normal and content with life...
I am learning that while we can all work to improve our relationships with others, nothing we are doing or not doing excuses an affair and the lies associated with it. However, I wanted to save my marriage; I took a long hard look at myself and saw where I could be better in our marriage.
I learned how to listen. I learned how to be a little more compassionate and understanding when he’s going through a difficult time. I learned that dreaded word patience. I now know what it means to love unconditionally.

Reading this made my heart hurt; there are something’s that are hard to relive.

Fast forward 2018 anytime a text or a phone call or a comment loud enough for me to hear was said I would write in my notes on my phone. I will not let them take my power I did this for months but the truth. I did let him take my power over and over with every lie.
I stopped eating, I stopped sleeping, when all I wanted to do was sleep, but I was tormented by thoughts and now an empty bed. I would write and cry until I had nothing left to say or drift off to sleep.
Did you know your mind can create a whole story when it feels so lost?
I went from the beginning of not talking to anyone for weeks to needing people, so my mind would stop going crazy.
I went from exercising daily to only being able to breathe.

You will experience a repeating cycle of emotions that you never thought were possible. I just talked with a friend about one step forward and ten steps back. How can you possibly love and dislike someone so much at the same time? How can you go from laughing to crying in a matter of seconds?

It was all too easy for me to blame myself. It was my fault that he no longer loved me. I am learning that this never had anything to do with me, thanks to therapy. I did not make these choices for him. I did not do anything to cause him to make these choices. He didn’t ask me ahead of time. He didn’t even tell me that he was unhappy. Not once just chose to alter our lives because he thought he would never be caught. These were choices that he made entirely on his own.

Give it time. I hated this advice in the beginning because I wanted to feel better right then. But time has helped me realize that I don’t like that word time, and I try never to use it.
I have a whole post on time. Right now, all I can do is breathe. Fight to find the blessings in this mess. The best way I can describe it is this. Covid-19 came along, and the world stopped as we all know it. But this is what it felt like for me two years ago when all this started. My world had stopped when everyone else just kept turning. I don't wish this pain on anybody, but I know that the world has stopped for so many when they are left with the trauma of healing from something. This is what it felt like when I started to discover the piece of my life I knew nothing about when someone I loved made a choice to lie, cheat, and the decision to hurt me the same way he had once before. He wasn’t stupid; he knew what it had done to me, and he had just willingly chosen to do it again. Shocking to the world this new virus, but for some, we have already felt this distance from the one’s we love, we have felt the shock of the new normal, the isolation, the fear of the unknown. The truth that we will have a new Normal when all this is done when we can breathe again! The lord is showing us what’s most important in the darkness, and it isn’t all the outside material things of the world but the light! Love, eternity, and family.