Scars and Salve

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I have neglected this blog in favor of Instagram and I do not want to do that.  The computer is often being used for school work right now and the house is busy and loud and not conducive to writing.

I am enjoying having the kids home so much.  I know some of them would much rather be in school (college in spring, HELLO!!!) but we seem to be figuring out how to all live together as we go, with fits and starts and little breakdowns and fun too.  Adjusting to a new normal I guess and the process of adjusting isn’t always smooth but there is camaraderie-that which is love-in that also if that makes sense.

I was thinking the other night about the stages of grief amidst the hell of divorce.  The hardest stage is acceptance.  To accept what is happening to me, my life, my future, even my past feels robbed of all the joy it held.  It decimates a spouse. To the core.  It’s not a sucker punch.  It’s truly decimation. Everything that you thought was for sure is gone.  Comfort is gone. It’s like getting pummeled until you can’t breathe and then getting the legs knocked out from under you so you can’t walk.  It feels like free falling while you watch parts of your life-things you loved-your children’s hearts-fall with you.  Reality isn’t reality anymore.  You don’t know who you are, and where you are or what you have or how to come back.  It’s terrifying.

The truth is there is no coming back-not to the world you once knew.  Ever again.  You are changed forever.  Made anew from the ground up, over years, hour by painful hour.  The naivety, that blind trust, that sure thing, that safe feeling, that self-confidence, the worthiness you possessed, seem like it will never exist in your world again.  It is a walk through hell.  I have had to start becoming me again, and lose half of me that I had grown so used to-and then question who that half ever was.  It gets tiring losing and finding every day when you just want to live.  It’s easy to forget what just living feels like.  I honestly don’t remember.

There is so much to write about.  So many women who go through this same thing.  And sometimes I feel like I’ve been through enough.  Do you want help with recurrent unexplained miscarriage? I’m your woman.  Cancer?  Triple negative?  Call me.  The devastation of a divorce and broken trust?  Yep I got you.

But please that’s where it ends.  That is enough.  I have made that plea to God more times than I can count.  I have sat in church alone weeping and saying please please please fix this God.  And He didn’t.  How many women, mothers, wives have had the same plea?  About our husbands, our children, our babies and all the circumstances that life presents us?

And here I stand.  Because dammit, I still want to be here. Fearful, broken hearted, lonely, scared to death, full of sadness and then full of rage, and then back again, full of joy, but is that joy?  I forget what that feels like but I know I want to be here.

I stopped asking why.  I stopped asking why me.  It took a long time before I ditched why.  Do you know there is no answer to that question in circumstances beyond your control?  Did you have a choice?  You won’t get an answer to why that will ever be sufficient or that will ever ever come close to justifying the pain.  And when anyone tries to answer that question for you, it will hurt more and madden you.  Because we live in a broken world?  Because humans can be cruel to each other?  Because cells divide wrong?  See, that will never be sufficient.  Why does not erase the pain, it stings the wound.

I stopped imagining in my head that this can’t have happened-I can go there but I don’t let myself. I don’t dream of it all being gone and only very rarely do I ever wake up with that awful gasp that hits hard in the chest thinking it was a nightmare.  I don’t dwell much on the empty space on my chest with the big jagged scar where a breast used to be. I am used to it.  It’s a part of who I am.  The memory of the children I lost doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, because I didn’t let that loss scare me into paralysis.  I have walked the path of that pain, and still the ghosts pop out, but rarely do they knock me over.  That I believe is what acceptance looks like.

And this next horror?  I have to trust that there will be a beautiful future for me in store.  That I will survive this.  That I will trust again, and love again, and that my children will be ok.  That the past and this trauma won’t hurt like the hell it does now.  That we will all bear the scars but they will heal, that I can heal with time.  That my journey can help another woman-that is more important to me than anything else.  No pride.  Humbleness.  Vulnerability.  Courage.

I know this for sure-time is my salve.