Wake up Call

            I have been going through life these past few weeks and really just trying to warrior princess through anything uncomfortable and difficult without breaking down. Not because something new and horrible has happened but just because I am finally looking at some things and thinking ‘yes now is the time.’ I would say that deep inside I have been dealing with this for about a month now. In my last post I talk about this and how I am ready for some change and how scary it is and yet how excited I am. I really am excited because I know that no matter what happens in the end it is going to be perfect. I always say that I don’t know what the outcome is going to be or where I am going to end up because I really don’t know. What I want changes so often and the change comes so ferociously that sometimes I am not ready for it. It’s like an out of body experience…kind of like you are watching yourself from some high vantage point and you’re yelling ‘hey you down there stop doing that!’ The thing is, I believe that change is necessary to living and so I am chasing it. I think I have been doing pretty well… yeah I think a lot of things that aren't so true. I will admit that during this past month I have been really happy and really excited and yet there is an underlying panic that settles in when I am alone. There is an overwhelming desire to hide and to just say ‘I quit.’ I just keep doing what I am doing because I have to but I have to wonder why if I am doing something good for me am I so fidgety with nervous excitement? I literally sit at work and jiggle my leg…the whole day. I could blame it on caffeine or lack of sleep or anything but I think…actually I know that it’s something inside of me that is unsettled. Today I realized what that was…I haven’t been praying about anything outside of when I am at church. How sad is that?! I love God and I haven’t lost my faith…this has not been a conscious effort to give up praying, this is just me letting life get in the way. Life is not as good when I am not connected to God. I keep living of course and he keeps loving me and giving me good things but I feel a lack inside of myself. I feel like I am doing it alone and that is where the stress and fear and anxious feelings come from. I think I understand the reason why I haven’t prayed as much and I am ashamed to admit this but, here it is:

            I prayed every day for my husband…every single time I would talk to God the only thing that I would want to talk to him about was my husband. I would start praying for someone else or something else or just try and talk to God and I would the whole time be thinking OK, I want to be done with that now so I can beg God to help my husband. I would just want to close my eyes and cry and tell God how scared I was for him, for us, for his future. Anything else seemed so second place to me. I still did pray for other people, its not like I cut people off or lied and said I would pray about something that I didn't pray for but seriously I would start off praying about my husband, then a break in the middle to pray for him again and then finish off with him. I couldn't get it out of my brain or my heart and I just had to tell God over and over what I wanted to see, what I was hoping for and how I felt. Then slowly life seeped in and I think I started to get…and still am a little bitter. I wouldn't say I was bitter towards God, mostly towards the constant unchanging love I had for my husband. Then I had a realization that yes, I could live without my husband and that turned into me feeling like I didn't want to pray about him anymore. I didn't want to pray for something I wasn't even sure that I wanted anymore. I mean in my heart I still want him OK and to go to heaven but suddenly I wasn't begging God to have him in my life forever. This is my biggest fail yet. Since the need for him to be with me forever was not as constant my prayer for him stopped being constant and slowly trickled down to nothing. I went from daily praying for someone to kind of just wanting the whole issue to disappear.  This really happened in a matter of weeks. I think I became a little angry…OK a lot angry with the situation. I just didn't want to deal with him and the memories and because of that I didn't pray for him. My whole prayer life in the past year revolved around him and so I guess I just stopped praying. I mean yes at church I prayed…like I said this wasn't a conscious effort to not pray, it’s just the way it happened. I wouldn't find time to go somewhere and pray because I didn't feel like talking about my husband or anything to do with him to anyone; I just want to forget it happened. Unfortunately right now that’s just where I am at with that. The thing is, I cannot just be there. I can never be in the place where I am not praying, really praying about everything. I cannot stop telling God that I love him and that I am so thankful for my life. I can’t forget all the good things he has given me and how happy he has kept me even when I felt my lowest. I cannot forget that he still knows my heart and my fears and that he wants to give me all things. I cannot let even the smallest amount of bitterness seep in and take over the unconditional love I have for the man I married. I still don’t want him hurting and going to hell. I want him to go to heaven and although right now I don’t want him as is he, I still love the man I married and I want good things for his life. I don’t know why or how I let this happen, I think that in the process of finding myself and taking steps forward I forgot about the most important thing…souls. His, mine, everyone's. That is the most important thing. Not what they have done to us, for us, or with us but the fact that love is above all else. Loving someone doesn't mean holding there hand while they hurt you it just means wanting them to succeed and I forgot that. I pushed so hard so quickly that I let the hurt be the thing that pushed me forward. I am thankful for the wake up call and the chance to move forward but I want to make sure I am doing it right. I want to move up not down. I want to know what it really means to love someone even when they can’t offer you any part of themselves. I can separate from love “the feeling” and all the pain that is attached and move into love “the action”, the real form of love. I want this for everyone not just for my husband. This is a battle for me, it’s hard to push myself that far away and not let my flesh and feelings get involved but I know one area where I can get help with that. I can pray. I can pray about everything, I know where my help comes from and it is time to start accessing that again.

Moving on to Being Wanted

            Moving on…this phrase seems so ominous; so much of it is unknown. I am not even sure that, that is the phrase I would use to describe what I want now. I just know that as of lately I am done with where I am and what I have allowed so far. I guess “moving forward” has a more positive ring to it. I think in reality what I want, what I have decided that I need is to be wanted. I don’t want to be stuck in a place where I wonder if I am wanted and yet seeing by action that I am not. I shouldn't have to wonder at all, I should know for a fact that if I had been wanted then I would have been kept. So I here I am at another phase of life and I have decided that its time to get up and its time to act on what I want out of the future. I think I have been doing this all along really, maybe in my own way and in my own time but I know that not one day has gone by that I have stayed the same. I know that recently I took a look back and suddenly where I had been and where I am now seemed like miles apart. When I realized this I was not comforted, I was scared. I still am. I am not necessarily fearful and shaking but I am leery…I am cautious. I am stepping out and I am thinking, this may not be exactly what you wanted either. I just know that sitting here hoping to be wanted is not where I want to stay. I have branched out a little, made some new friends, let some new people in to my life, allowed myself to be open and for the first time last night I knew for a fact that I was not the same. My feelings and my opinions have changed and my hopes and dreams aren't far behind that and when I knew this I cried my eyes out. You see there is comfort in knowing for sure what you want and waiting for it but there is a difference in that and being comfortable enough to not let life happen. I was there. I was living but all the while there was a part of me that was dying, there was a part of me that I was keeping secret and safe. The hoping was becoming my deception because what I hoped for I was staying for and you cannot stay the same. Your life will change you and your circumstances will shape you and yes you can choose how they do but not changing, that’s dangerous. So yes, I suddenly realize I had to change, that I had been changing all along and that now my heart and my mind were finally catching up with this and I hated it. I berated myself for the all the statements that I have made that I don’t even know if I agree with anymore. I cried as I felt every dream I kept safe and hidden finally being washed away to make room for new dreams. Part of me does not want the new; I want the old to be OK, to be right. Of course those of you who know me know what I am referring to. My husband, my marriage, the one thing that has stalled me in my life. I don’t know how every single day up until this point I have said ‘I love him and I cannot leave him. I cannot let him do this alone. Do what alone? Leave? Damage himself as well as others? What do I honestly feel like I am leaving him alone to do? Am I leaving him alone to survive? I know he did it to me, I know none of the failure is my fault. I know and yet I have held on with all of my might. I think for a while it was necessary to still feel like I could help him, like I could be there for him. I think it kept me sane for a lot of this past year but then I remember…it has been a year. Nothing is better with us, thing have in a way gotten worse and I feel like part of me has just kept living except this one part. There is this one part that just needed to be where it was at but, no more. This part of me is trying so hard to catch up with the rest of me and just keep moving forward. I hate and I love looking back. I love that there is good behind and there are lessons but I hate that it makes me hurt and it makes me cry. When I look back now at last year all I can see is pain. I have to go further back then a year ago to see happiness and when you can’t even see a good memory in the past year you start to realize that its time. I don’t mean that there are no good memories in any part of my life, I just mean in my marriage. I just mean in the one thing that has been my constant battle. Life in general has been good, life is good but this one thing needs to be done. When you finally take a breath and look someone in the eye and tell that them that you are ready to feel wanted again they’re reactions vary but none of them help or make you feel better. You can go from sympathetic smiles to shouts of victory and you know they mean well but you can’t imagine how they feel happy when you feel so scared. People have literally said ‘oh I am so happy that you’re FINALLY there.’ I kind of nod and smile because I think yeah…thanks, but do they know what they are saying? I am so happy that you’re finally over your husband leaving you and humiliating you? I’m not… or oh I am so happy that you’re finally not in love with that person anymore…I am. I don’t think they know that I am no where near over him I am just getting over just life we had together. I am not ready to marry the first guy that smiles at me. I am just finally ready to be wanted again. I am ready to be worthy to someone. That doesn't mean today or tomorrow it just means that I have learned that you can want and feel like you need someone and that someone can not need or want you at all. They can live without you no matter how many tears and prayers have gone out on their behalf. I have learned that, I may have even accepted that. It doesn't make the love go away but it puts the love in perspective and it lets you take that step. The moving forward really hurts; it causes some confusion such as…how can I move without my everything? He was my everything. And then you remember that in the past year you have gotten up every single day and handled life without your “everything.” At one time he was everything I wanted but I was not everything he wanted. That needs to be mutual. The love is not lost it is just different now because I am different now. I can’t say that there will not be times of hope, that I won’t sometimes feel the loss and beg God for another miracle. I cannot even say that I am not still praying for a miracle every single day but I can say that no matter where I go from here, I am going completely. I am moving forward in every single way and I moving on to being wanted. 

I don't Know

            I wore make-up to work today, I never do that. I had a rough night last night and I wasn't even awake. I know that sounds crazy but somehow in my sleep last night I kind of lost it. It was so bad that I woke myself up this morning because I was sobbing..in my sleep, because of my dream but it transferred into a physical reality. I woke and had tears in my eyes felt like I had been awake and crying all night. When I woke up I just stayed in bed thinking ‘OK you’re awake now. This dream cannot hurt you, it wasn't real, that didn't happen.’ The problem is the situation in the dream is going to happen. It will be a reality for me, I am going to have to deal with it and there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about it and wish somehow it would all go away. What scared me the most when I finally woke up was how badly I reacted to the situation in my dream. Some things you just cannot prepare yourself for and this is one of those things. Now I’m scared…what if that’s how it really goes down? Wonder if I lose it and spend days and days of my life sobbing and crying and undoing all the careful planning and work I have put into protecting my heart and my mind. Wonder if I don’t handle this as well as I thought I was going to? Wonder if I am not OK after this? In my dream I felt completely betrayed by people that I know love me and that I know are on my side. I knew they weren't trying to hurt me and that what they did was not wrong on their part but it felt like I wasn't considered at all in the situation. The feeling and the problem was mine and I am worried that I may feel that way in real life. Needless to say I didn't wake up and then breathe a sigh of relief, I woke up with puffy red eyes from crying in my sleep and then cried some more. One more time I begged God to please make it all go away…literally all of it. The other kicker was that in my dream my older sister was here and she was taking care of me and making sure that I was OK. She sat by me while I was crying my eyes out. In real life when this happens she won’t be here. She is thousands of miles away. That reminder made me cry even more because a lot of times she has been the one who forces me to be strong, to go out, and to not wallow. It brought me to another thought; I don’t know if what I thought I wanted is really what I want. I have spent the past year of my life praying for a miracle, a specific miracle and now after all of that time I don’t know if that’s what I want. I mean I do, but what I want comes with all kinds of conditions like, I only want it if this happens or if it’s not this way and so on and so forth. I mean I know a miracle is all encompassing but wonder if its not the way I want it? Wonder if yeah, I get what I wanted but it comes at a high price that I am too tired and too worn out to pay? Its just one of those days, I have a lot of questions and I am exhausted. I hope this passes and that tomorrow I wake up knowing exactly what I want again and I go after that. I hate the not knowing and the seeming confusion. It just feels so wrong; it feels like I am fighting a battle that I shouldn't even be fighting. This is my life; this is what I have been living with and its one of those things that I hide away. Its going to get harder to hide, soon its going to be something that I am facing head on and the biggest fear is that I don’t know how I am going to get through it. I have gotten through so much in my life in this past year and I have made it, I have really made it. Now here comes something else, a different thing but still stemming from the same situation and I am just sick and tired of it. I think what I really want is to be done; I just want to be done with it all. I want to walk away and never look back. I just know that when I walk away I will lose something and in this moment right now I think I am OK with that but when I wake up tomorrow I may not feel the same. I may wake up fine and ready to fight for that again. You see for me staying in this is costing me but walking away will cost me too. For now I will keep living in hope, hope for the future, hope for a better tomorrow. I don’t know if it will come from walking away or from sitting this out and waiting but whatever way it goes I am going to need the strength to do it.