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.
A Graceful Catastrophe 