To us…She was beautiful. She was smart…no brilliant.
She could make us laugh until it hurt. She owned the room, just by walking in.
She commanded attention.
She was my support. She was my friend, no she was my sister.
At home, she was mom. She was nurturing. She cultivated her boys to be good men.
But she was weak. She was subdued. She was quiet so that he could dominate the house.
She chose to leave……
Then she met him.
He was energetic. He was charismatic.
He made her feel beautiful again. He showed her a good time.
He told her she was amazing. He told her he loved her. He told her she should be like him.
Then he told her she was nothing. He told her she would lose her children. He told her no one could love her.
He was manipulative. He was controlling. He broke her.
He broke her nose.
He broke the walls in her house.
He broke her computer, her phone, her relationships.
With her friends, with her coworkers, with her sons.
He broke her spirit.
In the end, he took her, but I won’t let him win.
I will remember her strength and I will be strong.
I will remember her love and I will nurture as she would have.
I will remember her ability to light up a room and I will have confidence.
And I will work every day to remember the real her…the her before him.
Because she was my friend and I loved her. And though I couldn’t save her, I won’t let one day go by without thanking God for the thrill of knowing her.
This week has been a tough one. I have found myself mentally blogging stories in my head to try to rid myself of the suffocating emotions that have wrapped themselves around me so tightly, that it’s tough to breathe. But when I sit to write these posts for real, I can only get so far before the blanket gets tighter and its too hard to go on. These posts are saved in my drafts. They are important to write. I need to work through these things so that I can try to shed myself of this heavy quilt once and for all. I may not be able to do this today or tomorrow or even next week, but I will. I will.
I don’t know what it is, but the last couple of weeks have been really hard for me. People ask me what’s wrong, why I’m crabby or upset and I try to tell them. But putting it in words, just makes me feel selfish and petty. Little things bug me lately. I can’t seem to not sweat the small stuff. I read the comments and the quotes about choosing happiness…and I do in small increments of time, but right now…it’s so hard.
I was mowing my lawn last week…and with all that “alone time”, all I could do was, literally, seethe about all the things currently irritating me (one being the fact that I was mowing the lawn.) Suddenly, I became aware that my whole thought process was about how angry I was…about stupid little things. I looked up in the sky and directly above me was a dark black cloud that was churning and moving. My first thought was…rain. And then I noticed that nowhere else in the sky were there even clouds. That this little black rain cloud had developed right over my yard, me….and my very negative thoughts. It was a haunting awareness of my thoughts and my state of mind. I worked hard for the remainder of time that I was mowing to think of other happier things…and the little black rain cloud slowly broke itself up, without ever truly raining.
I’ve tried in recent days to remove myself from this place. I have a lot of people that are relying on me heavily right now…and that prevents me from being able to really address what I need to with me. More notably, I’m aware that there are people that want to help, but my inability to feel secure about what’s really bugging me prevents me from asking or allowing for help. I’m hopeful that as the stresses of this week draw to a close, I’ll be allowed a little time for me…to work on me, to build me up again…to really hear what is bugging me, so I can work it out and move beyond this.
I really don’t like to think of myself as sad, depressed or unhappy. In general, I’m not. But every once in awhile, a little black rain cloud parks itself, beligerantly, over my head. Somedays, it’s all I can do to look up at that little cloud and pray for it not to rain down on me.
I dropped my kids off at their father’s at bed time and raced to his house for a celebratory drink and early bed time. **Side note: Who the HELL goes on vacation on a 5 am flight??? Me apparently** When I got there, much to my dismay, he was working. Because he’s a computer geek for a bank, his hours are highly variable. He assured me that he’d still have a drink with me, we’d just have to celebrate in the office, instead of the bedroom dining room. I poured us each a drink and went about putting the last few items in the bag. I was wrapping up my fidgeting and stopped in to see how his work was coming. I’ve almost got it, he said. I sat with him for what seemed like an hour, quietly watching him work. Then I kissed him on the head and told him I was heading to bed, as it was already 10 pm. I was going through my nightly routine when I heard him get up from his desk and head into the bedroom. I assumed he was giving up and turning in too. But when I got to the bedroom, he wasn’t there…he was back in his office. I teasingly chided him for being too committed to his job and started climbing into bed. He came in, grabbed me gently by the shoulders and turned me around. He said a few things, equally awkward and sweet, and then in the most tender way, asked me if I’d marry him. Now, with all the impending beauty of sunsets, beaches, oceans, boats, romance and RUM…this was the LAST thing I had expected, but I said the first thing that came to my mind. I said, “Of course I will.” It wasn’t a spectacular moment, not one for the history books or a Lifetime movie, but in his way, it was VERY romantic…and a moment I’ll never forget.
This is where one would assume the proposal was over, however, it wasn’t. After a sleepless night of anticipation, we were sitting quietly on the plane and he leaned over to me and whispered, “you never did actually say yes”. I grinned coyly at him and said, “I didn’t?” He assured me I hadn’t and repeated my words to him. With a twinkle in my eye, I said, “well if that’s the answer you’re looking for, you’re going to have to keep asking.” And ask he did.
Day 1: He asked when we landed in St. Thomas. “I’d love that”, I said.
Day 2: He asked as we watched the sunset from the balcony bar in the hotel. “Sure”, I giggled.
Day3: He asked on the boat, as we headed towards St. Johns. “Mmmhmmm,” I affirmed.
Day 4: He asked from atop the highest point on St. Thomas, as we shared an amazing rum drink and took in the view. “Okay!” I toyed with him.
Later that night, when we returned to our room, there was a live band playing on the patio directly below our balcony. We ordered drinks to the room and sat outside, listening to them play and reliving the amazing moments of our trip, thus far. The band slowed the tempo down and we danced together, so close and almost still, under the moonlight. It was at that moment, he said, “Will you marry me.” and the only answer I had for him was…yes.
One of the first things I said after my divorce was, I’ll never get married again. And I really believed that. Mind you, I didn’t plan to grow old alone, but I wasn’t comfortable with letting the idea of being “married” and all the stress it put on my previous relationship happen to me again. Then slowly, I started to discover that neither the pomp and circumstance of a wedding, nor the vows of the marriage had dissolved what my ex and I had created. We did. We never talked about our feelings, we only yelled when we were angry. We didn’t hear what the other was saying, we just planned our next rebuttal. We were proud people, who forgot to build OUR team. We forgot to put each other first. We grew in different directions. When life handed us circumstances that made it easy for us to grow apart, we didn’t put our efforts into building a stronger US…we put our efforts into making ourselves more independent. We erased the need or desire to lean on the other person. It wasn’t marriage that did that, it was little choices that we made along the way. Unintentional choices, that chipped away and eroded our foundation.
So when Mike and I were first dating, I made some stupid off-hand comment about never getting married again. And for just a split second, a look of hurt flashed across his face. I never said those words out loud again…although, there was still a part of me that thought that. Then months later, we were arguing about something small, and we both recognized early on that it was me…carrying my baggage of my past relationship. He said to me, “I’m not him…let me make my own mistakes.” And it hit me, like a ton of bricks. Just because I’d failed once, didn’t mean I was destined to fail again. In fact, I was now armed with experience and knowledge of what can happen.” And so I let him be him…and he failed and I failed, but we did it together. And when we fail, we talk about it. And when we hurt one another, we talk about it. And when we are feeling lonely or needy, we tell one another. I learned to be vulnerable with him. That if I tell him my feelings, he will listen and he will HEAR me. I learned that a relationship is never cemented, it’s one day at a time. Every day a blessing, every day a battle, every day important. So Mike and I, we talk, every day. We talk about little things, we talk about big things. We share our frustrations of work. We share our successes at work or fitness or parenting. He and I, we’re a team…every day.
So when he asked if I would spend the rest of my life with him, the only answer I could have possibly given was yes. (Well, actually I said, sure…which led him to ask me about 6 more times over the next 4 days until he heard the answer he truly wanted, but that’s a story for another day.) Because, together we will build a marriage, one brick, one talk, one kiss, one day at a time. Never forgetting that to say I do, is to say I will, each day for the rest of my life.
We are shaped by the relationships with friends and lovers of our past. There’s no doubt about that. I am a better person because of almost every relationship I’ve been in. But with every broken heart and lost commitment comes baggage. Baggage makes us react inappropriately. Baggage makes us reach for blame. Baggage makes us act like victims instead of making things happen for us. Most days, I recognize my baggage and manage my way through it, logically. But on those spectacular days, when my baggage partners with my somewhat shaky self-esteem, I seem to fall apart. I’m no longer logical. I’m an emotional wreck. I can’t talk about it, OR EVEN WRITE ABOUT IT, because my logical mind can’t resolve the emotional issues. (Of note, it’s taken me three days to write this post so far.)
But I have spent the last three days thinking about it. And baggage, while a heavy troublesome load some days, also allows us to carry the courage to resolve little things before they become the big things that hurt in the past. We have places to house the lessons we’ve learned. Baggage holds dear the secrets that we’ve kept to ourselves but somehow when we let those secrets out of the bag, we grow. We’re stronger in our own right. We’re stronger in our relationships. In the end, our load is lighter, because someone is eventually willing to help us carry our baggage.
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To us…She was beautiful. She was smart…no brilliant.
