I’ve decided to start this blog as my own form of therapy. I’m
sure I’m not the first and I know I wont be the last.
THEN...
In my 36 years and counting on this earth, I have realized I’ve never truly been comfortable in my own skin. I was married so young, which I didn’t find an issue at the time, but looking back I was in no way ready for the responsibility that comes with being married. But whatever, that’s what happened and I just grew from it. But then it literally exploded.
In my 36 years and counting on this earth, I have realized I’ve never truly been comfortable in my own skin. I was married so young, which I didn’t find an issue at the time, but looking back I was in no way ready for the responsibility that comes with being married. But whatever, that’s what happened and I just grew from it. But then it literally exploded.
Let’s be honest, my first marriage was a disaster. A beautiful
one, but a disaster none-the-less. We fought more than we got along, and
usually over money, his gambling addiction, unemployment, my tendency to just stay away from home when things were bad, and then 6 years of
fighting was shoved in a drawer and left to the wayside. He was diagnosed with stage
4 cancer at the age of 30. I was 28. Nothing seemed to matter, we didn’t need
to fight when the most important fight facing us was a losing one at the
get-go. We had what felt like the best support system, tons of friends, a big
church in our corner, and faith beyond boundaries. We found our way back to being in love again. Then one year and 3 months later
my husband passed away and I was homeless. In-laws asked me to get my things
out of their house just 3 days after the funeral, as they wanted to make the
space more comfortable for guests (we never really got along during those 7 years). I packed it all up in about 30 minutes and
stored it from garage to garage of friends until I could afford my own space. I
lived in a spare room at a friend’s until I found a spacious 300 sq. ft. studio
to shove my sad, scared ass into.
The crazy thing about grief is that no one can legitimately TELL you have
to grieve, it’s all subjective. It’s completely personal, and 100% at your own
pace. However – people DO have opinions as to how they believe you should
grieve, it's pretty crazy-pants. This was proven to me during the next year when I saw so many of my friendships end/fade away. Many of those friendships are still there on
Facebook, most are just hollow shells of what they once were. I keep
telling myself that I should be over this by now, I mean 6 years have passed,
but it still stings like a fresh wound that people would just discard me. It’s sad that Christians can be so
quick to shoot their wounded. Throughout my grief I was
able to cultivate some pretty amazing friendships with old friends from before I was ever
married, those who gave me their unconditional love, and I felt lucky to give them mine. My shell of friends would
label them “the un-churched”. Crazy how messed up that sounds. I mean the “un-churched”
to be so full of love and encouragement, no judgments, and nothing but patience
as they themselves battled their own struggles, but would give me the shirt off
their backs all the same. Then the “churched” turn their backs when attending
their church is too hard to stomach anymore, just too many memories of a life
now gone. No understanding. No patience. I still cling to my faith, and hold it dear, I'll never let the churched take that away from me.
That all being said, if there was one thing I learned from my first 29 years
– it was how to just survive. Because in the end, nothing is going to be
accomplished by holing up and hiding, no matter how much I wished it could. I
have even found love again. He is a great father, friend, and now husband to me.
Yes, I have now remarried. I have a handsome 10 year old step-son, and Husband
and I have a beautiful little girl. We moved further away from those friendship-shells and now distance has given them even more of an excuse to have nothing
to do with me. But honestly, it's also a healthy distance that I need from reminders of them, and reminders of that old life that broke me.
I work from home, so I sometimes go an entire week without leaving the house, and that really pays a toll. How I often find myself these days is just weighed down with a sadness inside. The kind that creeps into your brain, and then your heart and then makes you want to scream. There are days where I feel better about myself. I'll have utter acceptance that I will never be petite. I will never be 100 lbs. I will never be an athlete. I will never be mother-of-the-year. And accepting these truths still make a person feel like shit about themselves. So I push that sadness down. I swallow it like a really big pill with not enough water, until it chokes me. And of course, I just see these traits in every other woman I know. And it's nothing anyone is trying to do, I also logically know that it's not conceivable for every woman I encounter to be mother-of-the-year, but in my twisted logic I convince myself of it. And then I see all the things I should be comforted by, the kids, the roof over our heads, the Husband. I guess all of this is what you would call depression. Growing up my family always told me that depression was crock of shit. If you were depressed it was because you weren’t studying your bible enough, and chemical imbalances were fictional creations by the prescription drug companies. Self-esteem was a load of crap and if you ever felt down on yourself you were being vain and selfish. It’s taken so long to realize what it is that’s dragging me down, and it’s the one thing that my subconscious was trained to believe was imaginary, but was and is very real. A snuffleupagus if you will. My snuffleupagus.
I work from home, so I sometimes go an entire week without leaving the house, and that really pays a toll. How I often find myself these days is just weighed down with a sadness inside. The kind that creeps into your brain, and then your heart and then makes you want to scream. There are days where I feel better about myself. I'll have utter acceptance that I will never be petite. I will never be 100 lbs. I will never be an athlete. I will never be mother-of-the-year. And accepting these truths still make a person feel like shit about themselves. So I push that sadness down. I swallow it like a really big pill with not enough water, until it chokes me. And of course, I just see these traits in every other woman I know. And it's nothing anyone is trying to do, I also logically know that it's not conceivable for every woman I encounter to be mother-of-the-year, but in my twisted logic I convince myself of it. And then I see all the things I should be comforted by, the kids, the roof over our heads, the Husband. I guess all of this is what you would call depression. Growing up my family always told me that depression was crock of shit. If you were depressed it was because you weren’t studying your bible enough, and chemical imbalances were fictional creations by the prescription drug companies. Self-esteem was a load of crap and if you ever felt down on yourself you were being vain and selfish. It’s taken so long to realize what it is that’s dragging me down, and it’s the one thing that my subconscious was trained to believe was imaginary, but was and is very real. A snuffleupagus if you will. My snuffleupagus.
Now where to go from here... I have no fucking clue. And no
matter how much Husband tries to comfort me I can’t shake this sadness. It’s
happening more often than not lately.
Hence the self therapy of this blog. No clue who would even
read this, but if anyone does, maybe this is a journey I can walk with others. My goal to begin is to try to re-build those things that I remember making me really happy. I mean my sisters give me joy, my little girl is the light of my life, and my girlfriends are always encouraging. But you know that thing that makes you feel really good about yourself? That thing that makes you go "man I am GOOD at this!" I want to find that again. I need to find that again. I need to find ME again.
