Tag: vulnerable

life, love

In Spite of the Ache, I’ll Rise Up

A Graceful Catastrophe

This whole grief cycle is stupid. I’m so super completely over it. I’m finding that the ramifications of my ex cheating on me for almost a year has caused so many more layers of hurt than I initially even realized and they are all sandwiched in anger and disbelief and frustration and so, so much sadness.

What’s interesting is that the sadness, right now, isn’t coming from the marriage ending. I’m too logical to pretend that it didn’t completely suck for a long time.

What I am really struggling with is that I know my world view has been completely altered. I honestly, today, right now in this moment, believe that romantic love is an illusion. I believe that familial love is a thing and I think you can feel it with your friends. A deeper sort of affection and connection with family and those that feel like family. I think that’s ingrained in us at the cellular level.

Romantic love, though, has got to be a joke. In the last few days, I’ve heard about two more women whose husbands cheated on them with multiple women, one dear husband was also a fellow Ashley Madison user.

Everyone has a story. Woman after woman and man after man have come to me with stories of relationships ending due to infidelity.

Romantic love is like that faint smell of beautifully blossoming flowers that you catch for just a moment in the summer breeze – and then it disappears and you wonder if you’d imagined it. It’s there, so distinct, so strong…and so fleeting.

I don’t ever want to love like that again. And I don’t want to be loved like that again. It isn’t real. And if it is, it is fleeting. It is there one moment, so intense and beautiful, and then whisked away in the next. Only incredible destruction is left in its wake.

Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to that level of vulnerability?

That honestly just feels like such nonsense to me.

I know I’m still processing through this pain and I am fully aware that my thoughts vary depending on my emotions, depending on how I’m painting the world in that given moment.

In this moment, based on my own life experiences at age 38…and those of my parents, friends, and strangers…romantic love is a sham. It’s been proven to me over and over and over again. It’s a sad, horrible joke. It’s short-lived…momentary.

And once it’s gone, terrible things can happen. Lives are forever altered. Perceptions of the world that is being lived in have to be re-created. The world is no longer the same.

My world is no longer the same.

I am no longer the same.

I can’t decide yet if that’s good or bad or if it just is. I’m leaning towards it just is. It is my reality.

I don’t think I’ll ever again look at anything the same as I once did. Everything is different. Well, the way I view it is different. I suppose it’s the same world. I am just wearing different lenses now.

Surprisingly, I do have hope that this new world I live in will be beautiful for me. It does make me sad that I am no longer the romantic soul I’ve always been. It makes me sad that I genuinely have zero desire to be loved in a romantic way ever again. I’m mourning the fact that I no longer believe in the fairy tales and romance stories that have always grabbed at my heart. It’s all just fiction.

But what is real are people and moments and delightful moments with those wonderful people. It doesn’t need to be any deeper than that and to think that it does is a societal joke. I no longer care about the future, I put absolutely zero stock in it. It doesn’t exist and it never will. What exists is now. And I laugh plenty now. So many of you make me feel so special now. I am deeply loved by you. And I know it. Because I feel it.

I have a playlist on Spotify that started when two of my close girlfriends decided I needed music to go with this chapter of my life. I have since added to it and I’m really liking how it is taking shape. Music is so powerful and these songs are doing a phenomenal job at summarizing my current state – and helping me make sense of it all.

These are lyrics from one of the songs my girlfriend recommended. The song is called Rise Up and it’s sung by Andra Day. I actually frequently cry when I hear it because it hits me right to my core.

You're broken down and tired
Of living life on a merry go round
And you can't find the fighter
But I see it in you so we gonna walk it out
And move mountains
We gonna walk it out
And move mountains

And I'll rise up
I'll rise like the day
I'll rise up
I'll rise unafraid
I'll rise up
And I'll do it a thousand times again
And I'll rise up
High like the waves
I'll rise up
In spite of the ache
I'll rise up
And I'll do it a thousands times again

The next line is “For you.” But I’ll rise up a thousand times again – for me. For my daughter. I’ll rise up every time I fall. Every time I feel broken. Every time I feel hopeless.

I’ll rise up. I’ll walk it out. A thousand times again. Though, the “unafraid” bit is a struggle. I think that is there for the long haul. I’m far too afraid to be hurt and betrayed like this again. I won’t allow myself to be vulnerable. This castle is secure.

Which makes me think of another song on my playlist: Because of You by Kelly Clarkson.

Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt
Because of you
I try my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don't know how to let anyone else in
Because of you
I'm ashamed of my life
Because it's empty
Because of you
I am afraid

I know this song was written for a completely different situation, yet it fits – for the most part. Because of my ex’s actions, I’m now extremely guarded. And I just want to forget everything. But I’m absolutely not ashamed of my life. It isn’t empty. And the way I now am choosing to live it isn’t wrong. Though there is a void where romantic love used to exist and that void will remain. I no longer know how to let in anyone in that capacity. And even if I could remember, I’m much too afraid.

Despite that, most days, I am happy. Genuinely. I am fulfilled. My community lifts me up – you all help me walk it out. You, all of you in your variety of roles you play in my life, you fill my life with joyous moments. You make me feel loved and special and like I can make it through another day. You fill my life with meaning.

This journey feels as though it will be a never-ending roller coaster ride. A constant struggle. But I am not one who stays down when she has fallen – I am far too stubborn for that. And so, “I’ll rise up. In spite of the ache. I’ll rise up. And I’ll do it a thousand times again.”

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

When the House Burns Down

A Graceful Catastrophe

The other day, I was chatting with a dear friend. I was updating her on the most recent news of this catastrophe when she said something that absolutely hit home. She said, “When you burn down the house, you don’t have a say in what happens to the ashes.”

Today, I was talking with another dear and wonderful friend. I was also updating her on where my mind is and she came up with this analogy. If you’re drunk driving with your best friend in the car, and you get in an accident where the best friend is killed, you have massive amounts of guilt and emotional trauma to deal with. And you also go to jail. There are consequences for actions, no matter how badly you may feel about your actions after the fact.

A month ago, when I was visiting a friend out of state, one of her friends helped me create an account on a dating app. Since then, I have gone out on dates with 4 different men, 2 of which were a complete bust. The other 2 dates were wonderful and we’ve gone on more dates since. If you’d like details on those dates, I’m more than happy to share them with you. I am telling you this for two reasons: 1.) I am not ashamed, and 2.) my ex’s verbal and emotional abuse no longer have power over me. I have been threatened by my (ex) husband that he is going to tell everyone what I am doing so I just may as well beat him to the punch and take away his power. He cannot control me anymore. *shrug*

I am choosing to live my life – my single life – as I see fit. My ex is no longer a person I know, nor trust. He’s a stranger to me. Yet, in many ways, he still behaves in all the ways I recognize – as just tonight he showed that ugly side of himself to me again. He tries to manipulate me with his words and his physical presence, he tells me that he talks with girlfriends of mine who, behind my back, are judging me and supporting him. While I am glad he is being supported, his attempts at manipulating me by using my friends, fall upon deaf ears. Whatever world he is painting, I no longer have to be a part of, and I’m completely shuttered off to him.

He no longer has power or control over me – and it’s destroying him. I think he has always equated love with emotional manipulation. It was how he was raised. He knows no better. He doesn’t understand why I won’t stop what I am doing and just give him a chance – even though I tell him repeatedly that I do not believe his words are genuine. And his actions back me up.

Tonight, I was threatened in a number of ways and every time I told him that he was threatening me, he appeared clueless. My ex is spiraling fast, and is trying so hard to take me down with him, but I am stronger than that.

I am thankful for my girls, my constant stream of support, that help me process my emotions. For years I fell into my ex’s manipulative traps. Now, when I feel myself starting to fall for his angry and manipulative attempts, I have my girls to sound off to, and they remind me of who I am.

I am strong. I do not owe him anything. And I especially do not need to give him my time when it is spent with him attacking me and trying to manipulate my feelings. Stressful situations help people reveal their true colors. For the most part, I have chosen to live life through this catastrophe with grace and understanding. While this blog might be filled with a bit more drama than it is grace, I felt I need to lay it all out there. I have friends dealing with guilt and emotional manipulation and I’m sure many more of you are, as well.

If you dealing with any negativity, hear my words. You owe nothing to anyone, not even your time. You do not need to put up with any guilt trips, any attempts at emotional blackmail, any attacks to your character. You are doing the best you can with the cards dealt to you. Own your strength and shut down the other person’s negativity by being completely shut off to it – do not feed into it! If you do not acknowledge it, you do not give it power. Tell the other person, over and over, that they no longer have control over you and you will not be manipulated anymore. It is not your problem how others react to your behavior.

It is not my problem how my ex chooses to respond to my behavior. I am being upfront and honest with him, answering all of his questions with truthful statements. I am not betraying him. I am not attacking him. I do not lie (daily) straight to his face. We are here today because of a complete disregard, by him, of his vows, and his family.

On March 17th, 2019, at 6:08 pm, my marriage broke. It ended. I no longer have a husband and haven’t for just about exactly 2 months now. It’s been 8 and a half weeks. The man I once thought I knew, the man I desperately tried to see, the one that was loyal and honest, stopped existing then. And the one I see now, the disloyal, manipulative, selfish, willing to do and say whatever it takes to get what he wants person, is now in his shoes.

And he wants me to be friends with him. This “new” guy my ex thinks he is wants me to contemplate a future with him. He says he wants to fight for us, to fight for me. And in the same moment, barely a second later, he threatens and verbally attacks me.

Interesting why I wouldn’t be open to being vulnerable and giving that guy a second chance. *eyeroll*

I refuse to be vulnerable. I refuse to indulge him by being a willing participant on his roller coaster ride. I refuse to be emotionally manipulated and verbally attacked.

I refuse.

Our broken family was not caused by me being unwilling to give him a second chance. Our broken family was caused by his selfish and narcissistic behavior. Our broken family was caused when he decided to join Ashley Madison and sleep around on every business trip he went on rather than put in any honest effort into making a failing marriage work.

He burned down this house.

Now I’m cleaning up the ashes in the way that I see fit.

Perhaps I am emotionally closed off – not only to him, but to others as well. I am riding my own roller coaster ride and am incredibly vulnerable from one second to the next, as I deal with the messy residue staining my life. I surely do not need to make myself vulnerable to a man who continues to attack and abuse me.

I am stronger than that.

So, if you have any opinions that you’d like to share as to how I should be cleaning up the ashes of my house that was purposely burned down, please, share them with me. Also understand that in doing so, I may close myself off to you, too, to protect myself.

I will not allow myself to be attacked by anyone. Ever. Again.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go wash the soot off my hands.