Part Two and Three

I actually wasn’t going to post again until tomorrow, but I figured I better say something about where I was going with my previous post.


Sunday evening I was in a really, bad way. Fatigue and stress have just kept building and the resulting depression was getting worse, despite the positive things I did over the weekend. 


I wrote a letter Sunday evening, not planning to send it to anyone since it was mainly aimed at me and at God, trying to vent the anger and frustration out of my system. I felt completely beaten down because I didn’t seem to be able to overcome how depressed and non-functional I had become. I was very angry because I was not supposed to ever feel this bad again. I know — who promised me that? But I was supposed to have finally pulled my life together after twenty two really bad years. I thought I’d done something so right ten years ago. 


But there I was, down on my knees and I couldn’t do anything but crawl to bed.


In the morning, I promised myself to give it all another try. To dig deep for the person that I know I am and who I actually really like because she is a compassionate, tender-hearted, funny girl. So I wrote a weakened version of how bad things were in my last post and tried to throw in a bit of humor, planning to build up from there.


But I guess I wasn’t very clear that there was more and I shouldn’t have stopped my post where I did. Sorry, I just didn’t want to be too long-winded. So here is:


Part 2


Difficult times often cause people to take a deeper look at who they are, what’s important to them and based on that, how they’ve been living and how they WANT to live. 


A divorce is certainly not something I wanted in my life, but it is what has happened, and as the saying goes, I need to “accept the things I cannot change and change the things I can”.


If I really want to go all out, I can try to believe this is not a “problem”, it’s an “opportunity”. More believable to me perhaps is the thought that there are things I gave up for the sake of our marriage that I can do now. 


I’ve been focused on the things I can’t do or have because of changes in my financial situation, but maybe there’s a creative way around those challenges. 


Or maybe I need to think about which of those things are really important to me and is there a way to make cuts on less important things to fund my main passions.

I read somewhere that the difficulty with which a person goes through a divorce indicates just how important the marriage was to that person. Based on that, the marriage was VERY important to me as was the man I was married to. 


Now don’t go, “Oh, no. Here she goes again.” I mention this because I think my desire to honor the marriage and the man is holding me back from moving on. To move on seems to say “Eh, over that…” It seems so disrespectful to me. So unloyal. So shallow. It makes a mockery out of a union that went very deep for me.


But everyone who knows me, knows my character and my heart. I don’t need to prove my feelings and beliefs to them. 


My cheering squad insists that I am so much better off now and that I have a wonderful life ahead of me IF I open myself up to it. Maybe I need to visualize what that life would be, to allow myself to get wild, and crazy with feeding in the possibilities, to make it as real as possible in my mind.


The questions that have been rolling around in my brain lately are: 

1. Which parts of my old life are really necessary to hold on to? 
2. What parts have I added to my life over the last eight months that I want to keep? 
3. What do I want to get rid of and what do I want to still add in order to live the life I want to live?

This evening I went to supper and a study group at church to be with some new friends I’ve made there. The group I joined is working on discovering our gifts but my main goal is simply to spend one day during the week enjoying dinner and conversation with some really nice people.


And rather than keep you in suspense, this is:


Part 3


I’m struggling with admitting that my husband might be right about one thing. Well, he actually never mentioned the thing I’m thinking of, he only told me he’d found his soulmate, but I’m assuming that in some way he decided we were a poor match. 


If I’m really honest, yes, we were a poor match. I hate to say that because I don’t think finding the right spousal match is like finding the right blouse to wear with a skirt. There is no perfect match. Put two people together, and you will have conflict. There will be things one person wants to do that the other person doesn’t want to do. Differences make life interesting and in a relationship, they balance things out.


But admitting that we were very different people and that he couldn’t live with those differences does allow me to quit trying to figure out what’s wrong with me and what I did wrong and beating myself up for whatever I come up with. And perhaps that will mean climbing out of the pit.


Maybe differences like whether to vacation in Las Vegas or visit the Grand Canyon can be worked out. But differences in basic values, beliefs, and the direction you want your married life to go, maybe those are differences that cannot be resolved and either you live with them, like I was willing to do, or you don’t.


But I’m sitting here analyzing all of this looking through the lens of what I would do and what I believe in. Obviously, H and I don’t think the same and it’s unlikely I will ever understand the path he’s taken. I can only accept it and adjust, and live life the way I believe life should be lived — with great passion for the things I love, compassion and love for others, and appreciation for a life that has filled me with ample stories, countless opportunities to use my sense of humor, and endless chances to learn from my mistakes.