Category: life

life

Strength

A Graceful Catastrophe

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.

life

Fault Lines

A Graceful Catastrophe

Today was a pretty good day. I chose my mindset when I opened my eyes, though the first hour or so was still pretty difficult. I’d had a dream last night that my (ex) husband and I were getting back together. Just as he was pulling me in for a hug, it all hit me and I pulled away quickly with the sad realization that we could never be an “us” again. And then I woke up.

I only slept about 4 hours last night but barely felt tired today. This is new for me. I used to be chronically ill, filled with constant pain and incredible fatigue. I’d sleep 12 or 13 hours and never feel awake or rested, then I’d have to go teach middle schoolers their math lessons, then come home and try to function until I’d finally collapse at my daughter’s bedtime, sometimes still fully dressed in my work clothes.

These years, where I was a “bad wife,” are thrown in my face as the beginning of the end. It’s hard for me to hear that, though I know I was a pretty terrible wife then. I just had nothing left in me. While I felt immense guilt, there was nothing I could do. For over 4 years I saw doctor after doctor who ran test after test. Eventually, they chalked it up to stress and implied it was all in my head. I was barely hanging on and then on top of that, felt awful for failing miserably as a wife, which I was reminded about. Often. It was my fault.

Fault is an interesting concept. On Earth, faults form as the Earth’s crust deforms due to stress (according to Quora here). In my world, fault was assigned due to stress. Being married to someone who has an invisible and mysterious chronic illness is not easy. It’s hard to understand. And when that someone is like me, someone really good at bucking up and faking it when needed, it just doesn’t look all that bad. So, from the outside, compassion isn’t really necessary, as nothing appears all that wrong. It just ends up looking a lot like a wife that doesn’t care.

Fault lines are surely different sizes, I’d imagine. The greater the stress, the greater the divide. My world now has a fault line so great, nothing could bridge the gap. But it didn’t start that way. My world now has 2 sides, the before and the after. The fault line has been steadily growing wider, year after year. I naively always thought it’d be passable. With time and effort, a strong enough bridge could be built and the memory of the gap would fade.

The thing about these fault lines that we all have is that most of us remember the exact date the bridge crumbled because the gap finally widened too far. It splits our history into the before and after. There’s no going back, nothing to unite the two sides once again.

I have two world-shattering fault lines that irrevocably transformed my life and a new me had to be defined. I survived the first, though it wasn’t pretty and many mistakes were made. I know I’ll survive this one, too, and hopefully with a lot more grace and a lot less mistakes along the way.

Take a minute and think about your world shattering fault line(s). Who were you before your world shattering news? Who are you now? Can you define several new strengths you now have, thanks to having to stare down that stress?

I was talking with a friend tonight and she’d mentioned how she compared her position in life, battling with her own earth shattering catastrophe, to those lives she saw on social media. It upset her and quickly led her down the “why me” path. She’s not alone. People do that all the time because a simple truth is forgotten: we all are weathering a storm. Coming with that reminder, the realization that life is easy for no one, she commented that she wishes life would just be easy.

But honestly, where would that get us? Life is not meant to be easy. We are meant to be challenged. We are meant to constantly grow and adapt, to discover new strengths that can only exist after trudging through the worst catastrophes.

So, I remind myself, and any of you who may need it, of two very important things:

  • we are all battling a storm, desperately trying to not get struck by lightning or be carried away by a tornado, and
  • if we do get lost in the storm, fried by lightning, buried in an avalanche…we are all strong enough to get out.

Like I said, today I’m in a good place. My mindset is focused on the good. While I’m not a huge fan of the situation I’m in, there’s nothing else I should do but focus my energy on becoming a better version of myself as I work through it. My first step along the way was to have a little impromptu mini funeral for my old self, while standing at my dining room table. The old me was pretty great and I was sad to tell her goodbye.

However, this mess with my (ex) husband is giving me an opportunity to learn how to eventually be pretty darn incredible, to be an even better version of myself. I have been given this catastrophe as an opportunity to self-reflect, to chat with my trusted and wise community, to learn how to do the seemingly impossible with grace and class. Today, I am using this challenge to change me for the better.

Over the last 3 weeks, I’ve stumbled and fallen into the depths of the fault line. Today, I’m starting to climb out. I may stumble and fall deeper again, but one thing I know for certain is that I will fight and claw my way out onto the other side. I’ll stand tall, in the bright sun, in a world filled with rainbows and butterflies once again. It’s surely going to be an exhausting journey. But in the end, it’ll be worth it.

Because my daughter is worth it. And because I am worth it.

And so are you. So, if you’ve fallen down into the profound darkness of your fault line, if you’re at all being blamed for the catastrophe you’re in, or if you’re blaming yourself, take a breath. Seriously, right now, take a deep breath (I just did) and remind yourself that you are in this storm to grow into a new and improved, tough as nails, amazing state-of-the-art you. And fault has no place along that path. You absolutely are strong enough to climb out.

So, let’s all focus on the rainbows and the sunshine because they’re there, waiting to be noticed.

life

Class & Grace

A Graceful Catastrophe

When the shit hits the fan, it splatters all over everything. Some days it just feels like you accidentally stepped a toe in it. Some days it feels like you’re drowning in it, gagging on it with every breath you try to take.

Today, I’m drowning.

There are exactly 86,400 seconds in a day. I’m sleeping somewhere around 5 or 6 hours a night lately, so let’s subtract 21,600 seconds (6 hours). That’s 64,800 waking seconds. That means that I have to remind myself to live with class and grace about 3,240 times every day. That’s about 3 times a minute.

Okay, I may be exaggerating a smidge, but not by much.

It is a constant battle, raging inside, to be gracious, to be understanding and compassionate…. I’ve learned today that sometimes not causing my (ex) husband any physical pain is actually an act of class and grace. Sometimes I have to very loosely define what it is to act with class and grace, and I have also learned that loose definitions are okay.

On good days, acting with a bit of a higher bar, a more classic definition of class and grace, is simple. Some days, it’s really so easy. Some days I feel like we really could be friends, that he can live right there in the basement for the next 8 years. And then some days, like today, my interactions with him are anything but classy and I think it’d be great if he left right this second. And then there are those days where I think one way for 5 minutes, another way for the next 20 minutes, and then I’m a puddle, crying for the next 30. I have very little control over anything right now, much less my emotions. I’m just kind of along for the ride.

Which is why I have to be intentional and tell myself about 3,240 times a day to give grace. More often than not, it’s usually said out loud, in a stern voice, and with significant volume.

Acting with class and grace through this, while trying to raise a strong, independent, and happy child, sometimes feels like the most impossible thing to do. I have worked my tail off for almost 9 years to make sure I am raising her right. So far, so good. My daughter is caring, clever, and has lofty goals, with even bigger dreams. It is my absolute nightmare that anything that is going on around her undoes all of my hard work.

Let me explain really quickly why I say “my hard work” because that was intentionally written. I was chatting with a friend these last few days and she calls it “being the heavy.” I have done the vast majority of the hard stuff for my daughter’s whole life. I am consistent, predictable, and firm. And she has thrived. I am not the “fun parent.” I do the “heavy lifting.” I’m the one raising a child into someone who will be a productive member of our society. I mean, she wants to go to MIT! The road to MIT starts now and she understands fully that actions have consequences. I’ve told her since she was barely a toddler that “good things happen to people who make good decisions…and the opposite of that is also true.”

So, she works hard to make good decisions. My greatest fear is that I will inadvertently ruin the work of the last almost 9 years by mishandling this situation. I’m an adult and am having a hard enough time processing what is happening! How in the world will she end up absorbing the end of her parent’s marriage? Thankfully, she is being spared the details, but you hear all the time how divorce changes children, and because she has no clue why, it’s all very sudden and confusing to her.

Which is why I initially thought it’d be best for my daughter to have daddy around, still living in the house, even though that is the most difficult thing for me. I can’t stand seeing him. I see a stranger where my husband once was. He’s not even remotely close to the person I thought he was – in fact, he’s exactly the person I was convinced he’d never be. And I have to see him anytime he’s not traveling for business and for now, that’s just about the hardest, most awful thing for me.

But then I see my daughter’s happiness when she sees him here first thing in the morning. And all that felt impossible feels possible once again. For her. So she is minimally affected. It’s not about me, really. I’m an adult with an incredible community. I can suck it up. And while my daughter may be able to as well, I just don’t know that for certain. So, for now, he stays. I’m the heavy. And because I’m the heavy, every decision I make is run through the filter of how it will affect my daughter. It’s all for her.

Which is exactly what has kept me from lashing out against my (ex) husband. Thank you, my sweet child of mine. And I’m sure your daddy thanks you, too. It’s quite shocking, really. I never thought I’d be someone capable of even thinking about hurting a living being but extreme trauma and pain make you think in some really intense ways. So, for today, the simple decision to not act upon the desire to cause great physical pain is the loose definition of me acting with class and grace. It’s all I can muster at this point.

Thankfully, I know tomorrow will be a better day because tomorrow will be a busy one, as I get back into my routine and away from vacation mode. Busy is good. And because mindset is everything, it will be one where more hope lies, one where I will once again believe with all my heart that children are resilient and I won’t “ruin” my daughter with whatever decisions I make regarding this messy, shitty situation.

Hopefully tomorrow, only a toe gets in the shit.

life

A Graceful Catastrophe

A Graceful Catastrophe

Google defines “graceful” as having or showing grace or elegance. Grace, in the way I am wanting to use it, is then defined as:

  • courteous goodwill
  • an attractively polite manner of behaving.

Catastrophe is defined by Google as:

  • an event causing great and often sudden damage or suffering; a disaster.

Despite suffering a pretty major catastrophe, with disastrous results, I am now choosing to live my life filled with grace towards others. Starting with my (ex) husband.

I didn’t get to this point immediately, though. I am currently typing this with a “boxer’s fracture” in my right hand. If you don’t know what that is, it is most commonly referred to as a break in the pinky finger, typically occurring after punching something.

You may not know me, so, let me quickly describe myself. I am an eternal optimist. I describe myself as being filled with rainbows and sunshine. I struggle killing insects – even mosquitoes. I am not, generally speaking, impulsive or violent.

However, the mind’s response is quite fascinating when presented with stress.

On March 17th, while at a dinner party for St. Patrick’s Day, a catastrophe struck in the middle of my heart. My home, as I knew it, was destroyed. I received an email from a stranger at 6:08 pm, telling me my husband has been leading a double life for over 6 months. See, he’s a stereotypical traveling salesman, who decided that turning to Ashley Madison was the way to fix an unhappy marriage. In a way, he was right. He is no longer in an unhappy marriage because we are no longer married. (I mean, we haven’t quite sorted things out to be legally separated, but that’s strictly a technicality.)

The rage and fury within was something I didn’t realize I was capable of, and, to be perfectly honest, I thought that extent of emotion was only real in movies. On Day 4, I lost my ever loving mind. I went into a complete blind rage (that’s totally a thing, by the way). I hated him with every cell in my body and in that moment, I wanted to hurt him. Like, really, really hurt him. I thought about attacking him but somehow ended up punching a column in the kitchen a few times instead. I didn’t really realize what I was doing. I actually don’t really remember much about those moments. He’d said something that triggered me and that was the end of any rational thought.

So, I broke my pinky bone bad enough that a few days later, I had surgery. I now have a significantly bulky cast on my hand that happens to slow down typing tremendously. *sigh*

But, a curious thing happened. My rage is gone. My hate is gone. And it happened instantly. Punching the wall, breaking my hand, was, simply put, cathartic. All the anger, rage, and fury flew out of my body through my fist. Immediately after it happened, I literally felt flooded with an inner peace. It was incredible.

I’ve heard that the people who least deserve grace are the ones who most deserve it. My ex-husband does not deserve grace. Yet, that is exactly what I am choosing to give him. He is still the father of my child, who is a sweet and innocent bystander in this catastrophe. She’s watching me and is ridiculously conscious of my every move. While she doesn’t quite understand yet, my actions are showing her how to handle pain and trauma. How to respond to those that hurt you. Revenge isn’t the answer. And surely hate only hurts the one who harbors it.

Love is always the answer.

I am hurt, disappointed, and awfully sad. Someone is going to cause my daughter to feel those exact emotions. How do I want her to handle herself when that time comes? I know one thing for sure, I definitely do not want her spinning into a blind rage where she becomes someone, even momentarily, that scares her. I don’t want her to realize she’s capable of such dark and ugly thoughts. I want her initial response to be that of grace and compassion.

So that is exactly what I am showing her. I’ve learned so much about myself in the days since March 17th. Some of which scared me and shook me to my core. Who knew I was potentially capable of such evil? Is that living deep within all of us?

It may have come about 4 days late, and my broken hand is an undeniable part of my story now. Though I believe it is there as a conscious reminder that I have to intentionally choose to live through this catastrophe gracefully. This deliberate way of living is for my daughter just as much as it is for myself.

We all have choices as to how we handle the difficult situations life throws at us. Please be sure you choose wisely. I will, too, as I will now consciously choose to live life with grace and class…(and muscles. But that’s for another blog. *wink*)