Tag: betrayal

love

Fairy Tales are Simply Nonsense

A Graceful Catastrophe

I used to be such a romantic. I’d cry at love songs and sappy romcoms. I used to love it when a boy made me a mixed tape, listing all the songs that made him think of me.

I used to believe in fairy tales. And I honestly thought they could happen in real life.

Now, some days I feel like a zombie, operating in full-on survival mode, functioning with a smile on my face that is only surface deep. Faking it ’till I make it, not daring to show those around me the insurmountable pain I feel, for fear of it consuming me if I acknowledge it exists.

Other days, I legitimately feel like a freaking rock star. Like I have everything under control. And on those days, in those moments, my smile stretches widely across my face and travels deep into my soul.

I’m living in two worlds, with a foot planted firmly in each.

I’ve thought a lot about why I have my zombie days. I mean, it’s not like my marriage was great before he cheated. It sucked. And it had sucked for years. I had told those closest to me that it felt like I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It was never going to happen; it wasn’t ever supposed to fit.

So, why am I so affected by this? I’m free from a lousy marriage! The things that annoyed me about my ex are no longer anything I have to put up with anymore! I can stay in Colorado, for Pete’s sake!! (For those that do not know, the plan was for us to retire in FL. I do not like FL and was absolutely not looking forward to having to move from my Utopian CO to live there. Bleh.)

I think the thing that really gets to me is how it all went down. I don’t quit. Especially something like a family. I would never abandon my family like he did. When I was chatting with a good friend about the possibility of divorce, my friend asked me if I’d done everything in my power to save the marriage. Could I walk away with a clear conscience that every avenue was pursued, a good fight was fought, but just lost.

And I couldn’t. I couldn’t say that I’d put forth any effort into saving the marriage, to be quite honest. So, in that moment, I decided to try. Like, really try. I wrote a 3 page letter, front and back, and cried as I read it to him. I owned all my faults. I made myself so vulnerable. I thought, if I laid it all out on the table, if I admitted to all the moments I was an awful wife, we could grow together from there.

I read him the letter this last fall. He’d been cheating on my since the previous spring. I was too late – he was already gone.

I made myself so embarrassingly vulnerable to him, and I genuinely thought he had heard me. How preciously naive I was. And then 6 months later I found out he’d been cheating on me for a ridiculously long time. What a fool! I was lied to for almost a year and I ignored my gut when I had a feeling something was off. The levels of betrayal run so deep.

I was humiliated.

That’s where my anger is coming from, I think. That’s why I hurt straight down to my core.

I put everything out there. Left my heart unprotected, let my guard completely down. So that I could try to save my family and if I failed, I could at least say I did everything I could to keep us together.

But he can’t say that. Rather than expose his soul to me so we could grow together, he withdrew emotionally and fell into the arms of woman after woman. For months and months. Then came home and complained about what an awful wife I was.

Oh, I can feel the rage building right now.

And this makes me so mad because if I can be played for a fool so easily by the one person that I thought I knew so well, how on earth could I ever trust anyone to not do the exact same thing?

I’m jaded. And I hate it. I don’t want to feel this way. I mean, I don’t think I even believe in monogamy anymore! Everyone I know has a story. EVERYONE. I’ll never allow someone to make me feel this way again. Which means, I have to remain guarded. I can’t be vulnerable. It’s inevitable that I’ll just get hurt.

So why bother?

I know, I know. Two months. It’s been 70 days. I get it. I know what you’re going to say. The road to healing has only just begun to be traveled. I get I’m still in the early stages. And it’s impossible to really make any progress with him still living in the basement, still here to lose his ever loving mind around me whenever I do or say something that upsets him.

He’s not the easiest person to deal with. And now that I am so emotionally closed off, neither am I. Vulnerability, especially around him, is obviously not safe. I have to guard my emotions, guard my heart. I’ve already been a fool for the last year. I won’t allow that anymore.

But that means I come across as cold. Unfeeling. Uncaring.

Well, duh. *face palm*

I have to protect myself now from the person he’s shown himself to be. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

There won’t be a second time.

So when I want to escape, when I want to run away, I think it’s coming from a place of shame more than hurt. Shame that I didn’t know. Shame that I opened up, accepted blame, and put my heart tenderly in his hands – only for him to spit on it before throwing it away, tossing it haphazardly over his shoulder.

The hard truth? Our marriage, in my opinion, was inevitably going to end. He’d asked for a divorce about 9 or 10 months before he cheated. I told him no, I wasn’t going to quit the family. I didn’t believe in just giving up. I didn’t believe in abandoning the family (because that’s what I equated it to) just because we didn’t want to get our hands dirty and try to make the marriage better. I told him that we needed to work on our marriage, that I believed we could have a happy life together. So I denied him the divorce.

And then neither one of us chose to work. Neither of us tried. We both waited for the other one to change. It took me well over a year to finally get to a place where I was all in. But it took him 9 or so months to decide to throw us away and sign up for Ashley Madison.

I was too late.

I loved him. He can be such an amazing human. I married him for a reason.

And now I don’t know him. I don’t trust him. I have no clue where his morals lie.

So on the hardest of days, I completely shut down. I go out with my girls, probably drink a little too much, and try so hard to erase the shame of being such a fool, for being so hopeful and vulnerable, for being so extremely naive.

Because I had no clue, when I exposed my heart to him, that he was looking at me with eyes that had looked deep into another woman’s. That when he hugged me, he was hugging me with the same arms that had been wrapped around another woman’s body. Many other women’s bodies. And this had been going on for months and months.

How could I have missed it???

I’ll never miss it again.

Because vulnerability is too risky.

There is no fairy tale. No Cinderella story. Perhaps there’s no such thing even as true love.

I’m sure the days of operating like a zombie will pass. I’ll find a new normal and thrive there. I’ll have fun and make connections with others, but it’ll be a long time, perhaps never, before I place my heart in someone else’s hands.

I just don’t trust that they wouldn’t eventually spit on it, too.

I’ll never allow myself to walk into another relationship with eyes naively closed, blinded by love. Another person will never throw me away again.

My days of being a blindly trusting, naive little fool are over.

Walls up. Guards up. My castle is well protected. And will remain that way indefinitely.

Because those precious fairy tales I grew up watching? The ones my daughter watches and then, at the happily ever after, smiles through her tears and gives a little sigh?

They don’t exist.

It’s not better to have loved and lost. It’s better to not love at all so you can never be betrayed or hurt.

Because fairy tales, quite simply, are all just a bunch of nonsense.

life, Uncategorized

Screw It All

A Graceful Catastrophe

Screw it. Screw it all.

It appears that I have a breaking point.

It’s today.

My ex husband shared with me today that a “longtime friend” has betrayed me, too.

This is just one betrayal too many.

It has been an awful week so far, with so many stones thrown at me. I thought I was strong enough to hear his malicious words, spitefully attacking me…but I am not. Rather than let them bounce right off of me, I absorbed them. All of them.

Guys, I’m done.

I want him to hurt. I want to intentionally cause him so much emotional pain that it physically hurts him. He’s been accusing me of purposefully hurting him all the while anyway, so why not just lash out and do exactly what he thinks of me anyway?

The rage and hurt and frustration and anger have all reached a violent boiling point. It has consumed me. It is literally all I feel right now.

He has accused me of not giving him grace.

He believes, with every ounce of his being, the world he has painted. So I may as well jump in the painting and show him that reality.

I. Am. So. Done.

Living life with grace is for the birds.

My daughter can learn a different lesson.

One where a strong woman can fight back against the emotional abuse of a disgusting and broken individual. One where I don’t have to tolerate being spoken to with such venom spewing out of his mouth.

Amongst other vicious attacks, he claims I am weak because I don’t make enough money to support myself and my daughter or be able to stay in this home without his money (which I cannot, but it surely doesn’t make me weak!). He laughs that I have to turn to my dad for help.

I HATE that I have to ask my dad for financial support.

I HATE that this is the world I now live in.

I HATE that I can’t trust.

I HATE him.

He has thrown all the stones he can think of in the last two days to intentionally hurt me. And he won. He did it.

So now I’m done. I’m angry. And hurt. And sick to my stomach. And I can’t sleep. And, really, I’m just done.

He wins. He’s gotten inside my head.

He’s beaten me down.

I quit.

I have no desire to live life with grace or class or anything that gives him an ounce of kindness right now.

I mean, I’m nice enough to him in front of my daughter…but I am done when she’s not around. He doesn’t deserve it and I’m too exhausted to muster the energy to give it.

I’m not strong.

I can’t do this anymore.

Today, I am defeated.

It took just a bit over 2 months. Two months of trying to be strong. Of trying to be the bigger person. Two months of fighting for my sanity every single day. Two months of being on the worst emotional roller coaster I’ve ever been on.

Two months. And I’m exhausted. I just can’t do it anymore.

I hope it’ll get better from here someday, but for now, I’m sure it’s going to get ugly.

Because I don’t care anymore.

Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I care so much that I am so emotionally defeated that I can’t care anymore.

And definitely don’t care about him.

There is just too much to process. Too much pain. Too much stress.

It makes me physically ill. Drained.

He thinks he hasn’t been receiving grace thus far. I wonder what he’ll think of my new attitude towards him…? He has no clue, apparently, just how graceful I have been.

For the last 2 months, he’s been on the attack, throwing stones left and right. Calling me names. Some days were better than others. Some days we were able to finish out the 24 hours without a single stone being thrown. A lot of days have been an absolute living hell.

Oh, man, the stones that he has thrown in the last 2 days alone…

And, tonight, I finally threw some back.

And will continue to throw them.

Because I just don’t care.

It’s like he forgets what he’s done, the tailspin he’s thrown my life into, his daughter’s life… He takes no responsibility for it. Shows zero accountability. According to him, his actions don’t matter because I deserved it all. His actions are all justified because I was an awful wife. (And I was…because I retaliated for being treated awfully. We were stuck in a horribly sad, negative cycle.) But they aren’t justified and weren’t deserved.

“Romantic love” is stupid. Romantic love won’t exist in my world…not for a long time. Possibly not ever.

It’s just not worth it. It’s not worth this. When Alfred Lord Tennyson said it’s better to have love and lost than to have never loved at all was obviously not betrayed by people he thought loved them.

First, my husband. Now, at least one friend. I just can’t take it. It’s all slightly too much for me.

So, yeah, that’s been a thing. He talks with my “friends,” apparently. And my “friends” are talking about me behind my back. Awesome. I needed more betrayal in my life. More proof that nobody is to be trusted.

Fine.

Talk.

But could you at least be adult enough to tell me to my face what you think of me?

Because I don’t want to have to waste my time on you, too.

We’re all so old now. Grow up.

So, if you’re a long time friend, I guess you have to prove that you’re really my friend. And not talking smack about me behind my back. It’s going to be a long road.

Because now I trust no one.

I’m done.

I don’t have energy for nonsense.

And my life is filled with things that just don’t make sense right now.

God, I just want it all to make sense.

I want him to hurt as badly as he’s making me hurt.

So grace is gone. For now. Probably for a while.

So I can hit him where it hurts.

Intentionally.

Purposefully.

Like he did to me.

Over. And over. And over.

I’m so done.

Today, I don’t care.

About anything (except for, obviously, my daughter).

Because I hate him.

And it’s consumed me.

At least for today.

And for tomorrow, I’ll never forget. I am a changed woman. And he especially isn’t going to like the new me.

So screw living life with grace.

In the long run, it just doesn’t even matter.

We’re born. We die. Nothing in between really matters.

So, I’ll join him in his crappy little painting for now. Show him what this reality of his that he’s painted really looks like.

Because it is ugly.

And I have no more energy to try to paint rainbows and butterflies.

Uncategorized

I Feel Everything…So I Feel Nothing

A Graceful Catastrophe

*This was written on May 15, but I fell asleep before publishing it, so it’s referencing Tuesday night’s chaos.*

I feel nothing. I want to say nothing. I want to think nothing. I want to embrace nothing.

I feel nothing. I want to say nothing. I want to think nothing. I want to embrace nothing.

After last night’s drama, where I felt emotions ranging from fear to sadness to anger to extreme calmness, it is nice to feel nothing today. I have had a pretty quiet afternoon and evening. I have been pretty overwhelmed today. It started pretty much as soon as I woke up and remembered his actions from last night. I hate remembering.

Today I went down to the courthouse and started the tedious and long process to file for legal separation. I officially am the owner of not one, but two failed marriages. What a gem that is. I am starting to feel like Ross, from Friends. I can completely understand why he stayed secretly married to Rachel, to avoid divorce #3. I just can’t see myself being in any kind of serious relationship ever again. In order to be in a successful serious relationship, you have to let your guard down, to blindly trust. To allow myself to become so vulnerable that I’d willingly put myself at risk of feeling this much pain that my mind literally shuts down in an act of self-preservation is not something I’ll ever actively seek out. At least, that’s how I feel today.

Sometimes something happens to us that hurts so badly that the only response is to shut down. To feel nothing so that you don’t feel everything.

Today, I feel broken. He broke me. I hate writing that, to give him that kind of power. Yet, it’s exactly how I feel. Today, I am fully barricaded in my castle, with all the hazards and obstacles fully in place to prevent myself from falling again. I cannot feel this depth of anguish and despair again…I won’t. There’s only so much a soul can take before she breaks.

It sounds so dramatic. And I know I’m “young.” I also know that time heals most wounds. Being right here in the thick of it, though, it feels as though this wound is just too deep and has too many layers that need to heal to ever resemble anything unbroken again. Some hurts are impossible to recover from.

While this isn’t my first trauma I’ve ever experienced, it is the most multi-layered. The stacks of different kinds of pain that need to be processed are astounding. I also acknowledge that my history proves that I do eventually recover. The next greatest trauma that I experienced took me almost a full decade to come back from. And this is just so much worst. I guess time will tell.

For now, though, I will remain guarded and actively escape this awful reality as often as I can. Unapologetically.

So, if you talk to me and I seem a bit vacant or distracted, just understand that life, in that moment, is just a little too much to absorb. Or if I talk a little too much, I know you will listen. My life bounces between extremes right now. It’s either “feel all the feelings” or “feelings? Those don’t matter. Let’s bury them.”

It’s interesting. I’ve always been open and emotional (and oftentimes, an emotional mess with everything worn transparently for all to experience right along with me). My ex has probably asked me, with no exaggeration, 20 times in the last 24 hours if I’m okay. Because I’m super withdrawn – vacant.

I am okay. I will be great again. I will go back to feeling everything again. For today, though, I will remain safely inside my castle. And feel the void that is my current state.

Because if I feel anything, then I’ll feel everything. And I want to feel nothing.

life

34 Days

A Graceful Catastrophe

It’s been 34 days since I found out my husband had been cheating on me since last May. It’s really quite incredible how much can occur in a mere 34 days. And it’s even more amazing how much one can process and grow after experiencing trauma.

I learned that I am capable of emotions I didn’t even think were real. I’ve learned that I am capable of choosing how to digest life. I’ve learned that I can have completely different answers to the same questions, depending on the day, and sometimes the hour, and fully believe that each answer is accurate, though they may be polar opposites. I’ve learned that I can be forgiving in a situation I once judged the heck out of and I’ve learned that PTSD can come in moments as simple as receiving an email notification.

I’ve been uplifted by my community, showered with generosity at levels that have made me cry, been hugged and supported more times than a person should need in just 34 days. I have felt genuine and beautiful love from people who were complete strangers 6 months ago and caring, sweet concern and love from people I’ve known since childhood. My immediate family has rallied behind me, showing me unconditional love by just being there to listen.

I broke my hand and have felt no physical pain, yet experienced emotional pain that cut through my soul. I’ve laughed wonderfully one minute, then ugly cried the next minute. I went from wishing my (ex) husband were dead to hugging him and crying with him, and trying to be empathetic with him about his pain.

All in 34 days.

The 27 or so hours that occurred between this last Thursday night and Friday night were some of the most difficult yet. The mindset I’d chosen after coming back from North Carolina this last Monday has treated me well. I liked the space I was entering. I felt mentally and emotionally strong.

And then something happened that triggered my (ex) husband, something that caused an interesting array of feelings to suddenly appear.

You see, in order to do what he did to me, his head space was such that he didn’t love me anymore. Because no one who actually adores their partner would ever do something like that, over and over again, for almost a year. He didn’t even care about me.

Or so he thought. He realized, late Thursday night, early Friday morning, that he does care about me deeply. He may still love me. And has been consumed with self-hatred, regret, and shame since. He’s finally feeling a fraction of the hurt I feel. He’s discovered empathy.

This has been so hard for me.

You don’t stop loving your husband immediately when something like this happens. Perhaps some people do, but I sure didn’t. He’s a good person, he has a great heart, and he’s the father of my child. So, I had to shut down that love. I had to turn it off. It’s not that I’ve fallen out of love, it’s that I had to bury the love in order to maintain a semblance of sanity.

I also stopped focusing on the pain of the betrayal. I buried the person he was to me. His role as husband was officially dead. Instead, I chose to consciously see him as the person he is to me – still the father of my child and someone who has all the potential to be a great friend. By changing his definition, by choosing to focus my thoughts differently, is how I’ve been able to gracefully move forward. My newly constructed mindset is still quite fluid, though. I’m still grieving, and some days, living through those day to day moments is still a struggle. I am very much still in survivor mode. I’m just here for the journey, riding the wave until the seas calm.

And then the full realization of not only his actions, but his feelings he’d buried so deep, come boiling to the surface, exploding out in such an emotional burst, that it took us both by surprise.

How do I process that?! This doesn’t fit in my nice little mindset frame that I built.

So, yesterday I tried handling it by working out until I was stupid (does anyone else turn dumb after intense workouts?? Is that a thing? Seriously, inquiring minds want to know…), because feeling physical pain and exhaustion is far easier to comprehend than emotional pain and exhaustion. And today I worked out again, pushing my body to its limits, causing me to feel that euphoric high that occurs when you crush a goal.

And you know what? I’m processing it all much better today.

Add that to the list of things I’ve learned in the last 34 days: having a healthy outlet to turn to when the emotions just get too much is life saving. Without exercise, without the community at my gym, I don’t know where I’d be. Having a healthy response (exercising) to wild emotions helps keep me from *accidentally* breaking my bones. I know, a shocking concept, right? *eyeroll*

After my last workout of the day today, my head felt less foggy, my emotions less erratic. My mindset has changed a bit – again – focusing now on the hope that through this pain and trauma, both of us will become better people. We can’t change the past, the choices that were already made, but we can surely focus on becoming better humans. We can both choose to move forward with grace.

David Crosby wrote about pain that was beautiful, really. He said, essentially, that “your pain is changing you.” There is no doubt that this pain is changing the both of us.

This chapter of my life is a full on storm filled with blinding pain and, therefore, an abundance of opportunities to show grace and compassion. I feel that I am a completely different person today than I was 35 days ago. At first I was sad when the old me died, as she was very good to me. Now, in just this short period of time, I’m finding I love the new me even more. Already.

Imagine what 68 days from now will look like. A full year. I don’t know why I’m on this path but there is a purpose to it. Nothing happens to us by accident.

So I, as best as I can, now embrace the trauma. I am grateful for the pain. Without the last 34 days, I would’ve never been who I am now becoming.

We all live through storms, some of our storms are more like a Cat 5 hurricane, some just a quick thunderstorm passing by. One is not greater than the other, all storms come with moments to embrace the ugly and hurt and turn it into something beautiful.

We just have to frame our mindset to see the beauty, rather than the pain. While I fully acknowledge that this isn’t possible all the time, I’ve learned that mindset is everything. We paint our world with our thoughts…and then have to live in that world. Why not make it full of rainbows and butterflies?

So, as you navigate your storms, both present and future, choose your thoughts wisely. As will I.

And always remember, we are all stronger than we think. We all have the ability to overcome.

My strength, currently, comes from reflecting on how much has happened, how much I’ve changed in just 34 days. It gives me hope for the next day, as that is all I can focus on right now. This storm has already lessened in its intensity and I know I’ve already grown exponentially.

I have hope for tomorrow again.

And it’s only been 34 days.