effort – A Graceful Catastrophe

This whole chapter of my life is so stupid and I can’t wait for it to end. It’s filled with ups and downs and it’s incredibly draining. I cried during Aladdin today, for Pete’s sake. My daughter, saying nothing, simply wrapped her arms around me and rested her head on my shoulder until my tears stopped. She’s so used to seeing her mama cry that she knows exactly what to do and that just sucks. I just want to press fast forward on my life…

But I can’t. I know I have to learn from this. So, I have a strong desire to try to process this logically because my emotions are all over the place and just make no sense. I look up the stages of grief almost every day. Just so I can see where I am in the process. Honestly, it varies tremendously from one moment to the next. There are days where I hit all 6 stages. Seriously. In the same day. It is exhausting!

I am exhausted.

With every bit of my being, I just want to move forward. My ex is currently trying to buy a house so he can move out. When he’s here, the roller coaster is so filled with twists and turns that I can just about barely hang on. I try to hide inside of myself, shut down completely, so I can whether the storm of his presence with as little trauma as possible. It doesn’t usually work. Which is why he needs to get out of my space and into his own.

So, until then, I fake it until I make it – or I just go work out as much as I can. *shrug* Working out makes me feel different types of exhaustion and pain, ones that makes sense. And my community there is incredible. The gym is, quite honestly, my happy place.

Outside of my gym, my community is also so strong, priceless, really. Some of them, however, I have been actively avoiding. Those in my community that also know my ex are harder for me to be around. With them, somehow, both the pain and the confusion increases. And I have to face my reality. Which I really do not want to do.

Right now, all I want to do is escape. And you can’t escape around people who knew your previous life. Or perhaps you can, but it is so much more difficult for me. So, my dear friends, I love you, I want you in my life, and sometimes it’s just too difficult and bizarre to be around you.

God, an escape would be so welcome right now. There’s a music festival in Germany at the end of July that I’d love to run away to. There’s this company called Active Escapes that creates vacations where you also have intense workouts and I’m pretty sure that would be my dream vacation. There’s a vacation through that company to Greece on July 5th. I’m pretty sure I’d give my left kidney to attend (kidding…kidding…not really…). I wish I could just go away until this chapter has ended. I want to flip the page.

I am so ready to flip the page!

And perhaps I am close. I feel like I might be able to flip the page after he moves out. I have no idea what is written on the next page. I have no clue if I am forever changed and jaded or if, once this pain is further in the distance, I’ll care again. I wonder if I’ll ever believe in love again. I’d like to turn the page so I can start figuring out who I am now.

Because I’m most definitely lost. I know that I am. And I also think it’s okay to be a bit lost. My world violently erupted and in an instant, his actions – the magnitude of his betrayal, unraveled me. It was catastrophic. I need to find out what I believe in. I want to discover where my energy is taking me and who it’s attracting – or pushing away.

The more I go through this process, the more interesting I find our energy and the universe and how it all works together. I am finding that anything that is supposed to be on our paths will be easily attained. I mean, perhaps you still have to work hard, but it just flows naturally. There is no “square peg, round hole” feeling.

My marriage felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Trying to buy a car a couple weeks ago felt like I was jumping through all the hoops to make it work. Until I let it go. Then, a couple days ago, I had an extra hour so I went to buy a used car, on a whim. It was just easy. Everything came together effortlessly. I’m learning that if it requires *too much* effort, then I just need to let it go. It isn’t meant to be on my path.

Life should be easy. In ways, so much of my life has been easy. And in other ways, I’ve been challenged in ways that should’ve broken me. And perhaps they did. I think I have been shattered a time or two. And I also think, ultimately, I’ve come out stronger in the end. I know I’ve been shattered this time. I hope, once this is a part of my past, that I will come out even stronger, once again.

I was watching a movie with my daughter the other day. In it, one of the characters had been hardened against love to protect herself from the pain. It was pointed out to her that that was a weakness. It wasn’t her being strong, and fierce, as she’d thought. I cried… In my defense, that scene just hit a bit too close to home.

I’m hardened against love. I have no desire to be loved, romantically speaking. Not because I don’t want to be loved – of course I wish to be loved! – but because in order to be loved, or to give love, you have to let your walls down. Become unguarded. I’d have to bulldoze my castle and all its protective measures that I solidly have in place. And when you allow yourself to be that unprotected, you’re too close to feeling incredible pain. It’s a very fine line. As history has proven, time and again in my world, romantic love assuredly leads to pain. I honestly thought that guarding myself was a sign of me being strong. I am protecting my heart, after all. But this movie reminded me that vulnerability is a sign of strength. *sigh*

I’m not ready to be vulnerable again. Not yet. But it still makes me sad. I’m so devastated that this is the life I’d prefer. But for now, it genuinely is. Nothing about being in love or being loved is appealing. I can’t see myself in a relationship. I see myself strong, independent, and single. Until I’m a little old lady. This is the new future I see for myself. So I’m grieving that, too. I’m grieving the lost part of my soul, the one I’ve buried in order to protect myself from the immense pain that loving someone could bring. That loving someone does bring.

Every single time I’ve loved someone, it’s ended in pain. Since my first love as a child all the way to now. How is that worth it? Honestly, it’s not. So, as strong as I want to be, perhaps I am just this pitiful little soul who now refuses to be vulnerable. Nah, that isn’t true either. I know I’m strong. It’s just that I don’t need that kind of love in my life – the one that inevitably ends in pain.

Give me fun escapes. Give me all the friends in the world. Give me familial and friendship love. All of those are wonderful and long lasting. And my track history shows that.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Romantic love, in my world, is fleeting and ends in a flame of fury. Every. Single. Time. To hell with it. And to hell with the vulnerability it takes to allow romantic love to occur. I’m obviously not strong enough to let my guard down.

And honestly guys, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Yes, it makes me sad, but sadness doesn’t make it wrong. I can travel with friends and have great, genuine fun with friends. With no expectations for anything. Do you know how freeing that is?? So if it takes strength to be vulnerable, I’m okay being weak there. I am strong in a thousand other ways.

So, I guess the overall message here is to just do and feel what you believe is right in the moment. No judgments that it’s not socially acceptable. No beating yourself up. No worrying that it’s not where you thought your path would take you. If it goes smoothly, then that means it is the right decision. You’re meant to do exactly whatever it is that you’re doing. If it causes stress in your life, if you feel like you’re putting in way too much effort to make it work, then let it go. If it’s right for me, I’m learning that it aligns beautifully and with ease.

And I’m going to start listening to that more. I’m going to be consciously aware of the amount of effort it takes for something to exist in my world. A little effort is okay. It’s probably even good. After all, challenges help us to grow. And the universe surely understands how much growth my soul requires.

Difficulties are acceptable. Some pegs may take a bit more effort, but they’re still the right size and shape. They still fit.

On the other hand, I don’t think I’m going to insist that a square peg could ever fit in a round hole again. Some things just aren’t meant to be and while it hurts to let it go, that is exactly what must happen in order to continue moving forward. Forward progress is always the goal. If I do get stuck in my life again, as we all do from time to time, wasting effort and time trying to make something fit that never will, I hope to remember this advice for myself.

If it’s on my path, the energy will flow so easily that it’s actually beautiful. Square pegs don’t fit in round holes. They just don’t and never will. I know that now.

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.

Tag: effort

Square Pegs Just Don’t Fit in Round Holes

Strength