Strength

You really have no idea how you’re going to respond to something until it happens to you. And even when it does happen to you, you still have no idea how to respond, your emotions are all over the place and change constantly.

So many people, almost everyone that I’ve told this story to, have commented on how strong I am to be handling it the way I am. On one hand, when I hear their words and read their comments, I am reminded that I am strong. I will survive this, of course. Coming out of this a stronger and wiser woman is the only option.

But then, just a half of a second later, I feel like such a fraud.

I mean, I lost my mind and punched a column in my kitchen so hard, or maybe it’s that it was so many times, that I displaced my pinky bone up and about a centimeter away from my knuckle. My doctor said that I broke it “worse than horrible,” (seriously, those were his words). Even after surgery, it’s still not lined up where it ought to be. The doc said it was just too broken to make it line up perfectly again. My pinky will never be quite right again. When people say I’m strong, I’m pretty sure this is not the strength they are referring to…

How can so many someones say I am strong, implying having emotional strength, when I do something like that?! That was a pure moment of weakness.

My life is filled with moments of weakness lately. Guys, I cry. I can be doing any random, mundane task and then find myself with tears running down my cheeks. I’m so tired but I cannot sleep. I struggle to have any motivation to do anything. I just want to lay down and forget my reality.

But I don’t.

I plaster a smile on my face until I believe it’s real. I go through the motions of living until they are exactly what I want to be doing.

Perhaps this is what people see; why it is they say that I’m strong.

But if I’m so strong, then why is it all still so confusing? I should know exactly how I feel about my (ex) husband. (What a dirtbag, right?)

Yet here I am, so very confused when it comes to him. We spent almost exactly 11 years together. We have a daughter together. We laughed so much together. Once upon a time, we had a beautiful and intense love for one another. I should hate him, but I don’t.

Our marriage was hard. And, as it turns out, he is someone that doesn’t do “hard.”
He’s a good person who did an atrociously disgusting thing the second he decided that to remain an active participant as a husband was just too much effort for him.

It’s easy to love when life is simple. When we met, life was one giant party. As time went on, our lives became more complicated, there were many obstacles to maneuver. We had a child. We moved to a different state. I became so sick that it severely impacted both my life and our marriage (though I hid the extent of it all from the outside world. Perhaps that is why I’m choosing to be so transparent now. I’m quite tired of hiding.). Some of these obstacles were willingly added into our lives. Others were not. Life was hard, and getting harder everyday. Loving one another became this thing that took so much effort. Nothing about our marriage felt easy. As the days passed, more and more moments seemed to take extra work. Until it became almost all of the moments taking effort. And a lot of it.

But why give up? What makes someone decide his marriage is too exhausting to keep trying to work on it? What is so horrible that makes his wife not valuable enough to fight for? That one hurts. So much. I was not valued. I wasn’t worth fighting for. You can tell me until you’re blue in the face that his infidelity has nothing to do with me. Logically, I know that. Yet, I still struggle with not being enough. If I were enough, in his eyes, we wouldn’t be here today.

So there it is. The great big, ugly truth. These thoughts are not strong.

Now, I can keep myself mostly together when I’m in public. I don’t really like to talk about these depths, to speak them out loud gives them more power than I’d like them to have. I know you mostly see the side I am desperately trying to be. But I also want you to know that the struggle is real.

So you see, I am no stronger than you. Any of you could handle this exact situation if you had to (boy, do I hope you never have to sift through these layers of emotion, though!) and you could do so in a manner that would also impress others.

When you see me, and you think I am being so strong, understand that this strength solely comes from keeping my eye on the prize – making sure my daughter is minimally impacted by this situation. My daughter needs a strong female influence. She needs to understand her value comes from within. I don’t ever want her to feel like she isn’t enough. I want her to know she is always “enough.” And by convincing her, I just may convince myself.

Most days, I don’t feel all that strong…but I’m trying to be. I’m taking this all moment by moment. I just wish those moments could not include him right now. Having him in the house is just about the hardest thing I think I’ve ever had to deal with on a pretty regular basis and I also know that having him there is making me grow at an exponential speed.

Seeing the man that I once loved and having him replaced by this stranger that caused me more pain than I realized I could take, day in and day out, is pretty awful. Some moments I can’t bear to look him in the eye and others, I long for him to just hold me close. I’m not entirely sure how long I can ride the roller coaster having him home takes me on. Or perhaps this will eventually become my new normal and all these emotions will calm down and fade. We’ll settle into a new routine that does not cause me such anguish.

Time will tell.

And in time, I will come to believe your words, your affirmations, your belief that I am strong. Just know, I am writing this to tell you it’s not easy and sometimes I feel like a fraud because I do not feel as strong as you think I am. That strength you see almost always has some emptiness behind it.

Even so, I appreciate the uplifting comments and feel free to keep them coming. They serve as reminders that I am strong. That I am enough. And I need all the reminders that I can get these days.

And just one last thing: don’t walk away just because it’s hard, whatever “it” is defined as for you. Decide it’s worth fighting for and go all in.

Love genuinely. Love hard. And think about this in all your difficult moments:

Love must mean so much more when it exists through the “hard.”

-Katrina

Someday, I’ll know this to be true.