divorce series: part 1

sending the wife in me away

there's a line from an avett brothers song that has gotten me through almost all aspects of my divorce. these words sum up perfectly my feelings about my marriage...its beginning and its end. 

all of it is only these words...

"always remember there was nothing worth sharing like the love that let us share our name"

i have no regrets.

my experience, and all the messy details, is a personal one. i also know that it isn't a remarkable one by any means. i'm apart of a very large statistic. and after over 4 years of healing, i want to speak plainly and honestly to all of you without undoing any of the hard work or filling in the space anyone close to the situation has put between them and what happened. this is not going to be a steamy tell-all...but i do have a story. and i'm hoping that it will encourage or buoy someone out there who just might need it....from someone who's been there, who still visits from time to time.

the intricacies of the end of my marriage are painful, and there was a time where i needed to put words to that pain on a daily. I’ve felt all sorts of hurts i never thought i would have to feel. but the beautiful thing about growth is that those brutal details, the ones you’re convinced you'll never be able to see past or get over...the things you think are the real source of your emptiness, somehow, over time, become the footnotes or afterthoughts to an even bigger story.

this was the beginning of mine.

(click on the "read more" link to continue)

the memories of my childhood read like little flashes of light...tiny snippets of insignificant mosaics that form a beautiful picture of my early days...the first climb up my apple tree, riding that horse, finding a butterfly cocoon at church, and locking eyes with max's dad. we were five. 

i suppose God has a way of dog-earing what seem like insignificant moments in life on the pages of our hearts and minds for later. i've never forgotten the moment that i first saw him...even when it made no sense to remember.

i know now that that tiny moment of my childhood was the opening chapter of my life as a wife and as a mother.

15 years of friendship later we were married.  we were young...and had absolutely no idea what we were doing. we just knew we wanted to do it together. and that was enough. our marriage was imperfect. but we never lost sight of the friendship and passion we had for each other. being together was worth the hard work. above anything else, i knew i was loved. and from where i sit now, knowing what i know, i still believe i was...just in a different way then i needed.

it's funny looking back, my life at 20-21 was completely figured out for me. i thought i knew who and where i would be in 10 years, 20 years, even 50 years. i was settled and we were happy. there was never any smoking gun...but then, 4 years and 1 little max into our marriage, almost everything i thought i knew as gone.

what started with a phone call from a friend with a heavy conscience snowballed into forced confessions with backs in a corner. i was the last person in my world of family and friends to find out that there was infidelity in my marriage. everyone knew for years and no one had the heart to tell me.

there is never a good time to hear painful truths, but i can tell you that everyone deserves the right to bare their own. i felt foolish. i searched my memories for signs of cold shoulders or distant looks..something to make sense of all of it. there weren't any. my new reality looked nothing like the life i thought i was leading. and instead of ending the trust i had with my husband or my family, i stopped trusting myself. i felt more betrayed by my own instincts then by anyone else. any anger i felt i silently inflicted on me. i internalized the brunt of the pain and i chose to keep trusting those around me when i had no reason to trust at all.

let me tell you, life doesn't stop itself around you even if it has on the inside. i remember going straight from finding out devastating details to waking up max from his nap and taking him to the park with friends....having my world crushed to pieces then getting into the car to go to a meeting or to work with a smile on my face. i never let on. i threw myself onto autopilot...surviving the only way i knew....and that was to keep moving. never stop moving.

i knew right away i wasn't going to be a victim. there was a moment where i realized i was justified in doing almost anything i wanted...burning piles of clothes on the lawn, keying cars, random bursts of anger and emotions, physically confronting or stalking these other girls. society makes room for a scorned woman. it was a terrifying power to have and i decided i wanted nothing to do with it. and while i still battled with these emotions, i chose to love. to forgive. to try and understand what had brought us to where we were and how we could mend what was broken. i felt his fear and pain and need for forgiveness as much as my own. we fell back onto our foundation of friendship. and that early want of just wanting to live our lives together, regardless of the work, still remained. and so we worked.

to understand why i stayed would be to truly understand the meaning of unconditional love. (something i never fully realized myself). and it would also be to understand a woman desperate to save a dying dream. really, when your marriage is rocked in any way...especially with infidelity, it takes the understanding and acceptance of the dying dream to be able to move forward. i had to bury my childhood ideas of marriage.

i lost a few friends by staying, and i still have people who don't understand why i did stay. the best way i can explain it is like this: imagine the love you have for the significant person in your life...the depth and intensity and realness of it. then imagine finding out they hurt you....and realizing the amount of love you have hasn't changed. you feel sadness...deep and true...but your love for the person is unaltered. that was my experience. and i had a peace knowing i wasn't going to go down without a fight.

for the next 2 years after, we sought counseling and worked on forgiveness and trust. i was told i knew everything there was to know. i had my good days and i had my lowest days. we had our nights when i would beg to hear details everyone had forcefully forgotten...begged to know if there was more that i didn't know. i felt a real need to open my chest, take all the pain at once, and stitch myself up again to heal. i couldn't bare to keep reopening the wound with new revelations. i wanted to know everything. i became an emotional masochist.

whenever things started to feel normal again...good even...something in my heart told me not get comfortable. the instincts i so despised kept warning me of another storm. and that storm came. one last confession. another girl...but not a current one. one that had been kept from me from the very beginning. one truth that i never was given the respect and honor to hear...even when my chest was bear and i was begging for truth.

it was then that the wife in me started to die. she became a cancer in my soul. i became a walking shell of a woman. so in love with a man that i knew i couldn't stay with. he, so in love with a woman that he knew he wasn't right for. we were riddled and disjointed. and i started to see a window...a chance to pack the wife in me away, send her off, and save myself as a woman and as a mama.

and so i kissed her goodbye...and i jumped.

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