Asters & Dandelions

I vividly remember the day, and the week that followed after my husband asked me for a divorce. I remember reacting defensively and blaming him in those first moments. I remember breaking a door and feeling so much rage, anger, and betrayal realizing the man who asked me to come home, the man who sat on our couch and told me he’d fight for us forever a month earlier, the man I have loved for more than half my life had given up on our life. But most of all, I remember that deep, raw hole within me. Sadness isn’t nearly sufficient and broken hearted implies this was a feeling others had felt before but in those moments, no one could ever convince me that anyone had ever felt the pain I had felt and lived to tell the tale. That week I acted like a feral animal. I broke things, I screamed out into nothing, I spoke to him aloud while he was miles away, I found corners and floor space to climb into the fetal position and sob, I lied unresponsive in bed for hours at a time, I cried longer and deeper than I knew was possible and about 6 days into my spiral, I sat in the floor of my bedroom, leaning against a door I had ripped off its hinges, sobbing just beyond the point of hyperventilating and it struck me: I was losing myself again. I was slipping away with my marriage, my life, and my comfort. In that moment I had to force the self awareness to know that my broken heart and feelings of betrayal were not what was driving me mad, those were simply making me sad; it was my need for control that threw me into my spiral like an endless spin cycle. To have the man I love and have built a life I truly wanted with not want any of those things that fill my core memories and to be able to do absolutely nothing as he ripped away from it all. It wasn’t the sadness, it was the helplessness.

It was not like a breath of fresh air but more like taking a drink of water on a hot day but the water is hot too; it wasn’t refreshing or uplifting but it was just enough to give me what I needed to keep going. I sat on that floor in an unresponsive daze as I thought about all I had overcome and accomplished this year. “For nothing” I thought to myself. I embarked on the most difficult journey I had ever been on; peeled away layers of unhealthy coping mechanisms, each time like peeling away a layer of skin to reveal a more raw, sensitive to pain layer; took so many things out of the backpack full of unresolved trauma I’d been carrying my entire life; undressed for the world to see as I became painfully self aware of so many mistakes, of all the things I have done in my life to self sabotage. All in the name of saving my marriage yet in that moment I was painfully aware it never stood a chance of saving my marriage, it was in fact to save myself. In that moment on my bedroom floor, I realized I had a choice: I could lose my need for control or lose myself; and I cannot lose myself again.

I picked myself up, I replaced the broken door, I said out loud all the most painful things to accept, I cried still but I cleaned up the literal disaster I had created and I picked my kids up from daycare, big-gulped the tears away, fed them dinner, and went to work the next day. It was in those moments of saying goodbye to my need for control that I was able to realize controlling my husband will never be a feasible solution because like all wild and worthy things, he is a man of great accomplishments and abilities and cannot be controlled but even more so, my need to control him is just another one of my unhealthy coping mechanisms. I can never gain the peace I require through “controlling” him. I have no desire to control or manipulate the man I love into loving me back. I have no desire to lead a life in a marriage knowing he carries the burden of a ‘marriage for the kids’ or ‘marriage for the convenience’ or anything less than a marriage for the marriage.

So I went to therapy, I read books, I listened to podcasts and even when I felt like my time and days had lost all purpose, I lead my life with purpose. I filled the tank with gas, and I kept traveling forward. I moved with intention, I worked (and am most definitely still working) on filling the holes and voids within me with no one but myself. Yes, I sought out words of encouragement but only from genuine friends and mentors who never took pieces of me for selfish reasons or wanted anything from me in return. When I feel completely helpless, I think of my never ending to do list and that usually results in doing housework to silence the buzzing of restlessness. When I feel unaccomplished, I think of the places in my life where I feel I need to work on and do something to propel those short comings which usually results in a run. When I feel unworthy, I think of all the people in my life, my therapist, and even people who have reached out to me from my blogs, telling me how strong I am, putting into perspective the obscene amount of things I have already overcome, and the celebration of how far I have already come. When I feel lonely, I think of what I genuinely crave and realize that, whether it is with my husband or starting over, I still have so much work to do before I am in a place to give or receive that from another human and attempts to feel some false sense of that on any level will just set me further from what I truly desire.

I didn’t choose to give up on my marriage. I chose to give up on the thought that I have any control over the fate of my marriage. Self shame, self blame, self hate.. none of those things enable me to go back to the night of that sexual assault and call my best friend and let him hold my hand through those dark emotions and times, they can’t allow me to go back and stop the spiral at any single wrong choice or cheap fix, they do not serve me in my healing, and I can definitively say they cannot save my marriage because boy if they could we’d be somewhere in a field of flowers with the taste of slow kisses and easy going love on our lips.

The things I cannot control: I am a thirty year old woman tumbling my way through the rubble of a decade long marriage coming to an end, with a job I find equal parts fulfilling and stifling, a severely injured sense of self worthiness, three perfect children I am trying to keep dry in this sea of change and pain, and fragile mental health quaking under the weight of it all.

Things I can control: I am a thirty year old woman who is learning to love herself again after years of wandering lost into external love, with a job she is consistently progressing forward in after a long time of stagnancy, a healing and growing sense of self worthiness through deliberate, difficult effort, three children who still tell me I am the best person on earth even on the days they wear jeans instead of their favorite pair of sweats because all the laundry is piled up in dirty hampers and they’ve eaten cereal for dinner for the third night in a row, and mental health that is forcibly a priority everyday and remains standing strong under the pressure.

Marriage or no marriage: everything I require, I can also provide.