2022

This is going to be the year of truth, of unveiling all that has been holding my head under water.

As this year comes to a close, I sit alone in a small apartment

I feel like I have lost everything, but nothing at all.

It is a horrible feeling of heaviness and dread of the unknown.

As the summer of 2021 was coming to an end, so did my marriage.

It’s unraveling long in the making, and the pull of the last string easily brought down the final curtain call.

I sit here and wonder if I am going to get through this.

This is so much harder than I ever thought it would be, and easier as well.

The hardest has been the hit on my pride.

Pride of what though?

What was I taking pride in?

That I was in a dysfunctional relationship for years?

That I stayed with someone who was rude, abusive and aggressive with me?

Someone that I was my lowest self around?

I never tried to be better.

I didn’t want to, and I don’t know why.

There was something about him that made me angry all the time.  

I didn’t agree with most things he said.  

Our opinions were very different and our upbringings were nothing alike.

We only had one thing really in common and that was that we came from divorce and grew up in unhealthy and unhappy homes and we wanted to do better and be different.

Instead we created an even worse environment.  

More toxic than that which we grew up in.

There were moments of love and contentment.  

But they were few and short lived.

We thrived on the chaos and drama of upheaval and despair.

The harder life got, the more alive I felt.  

I had a purpose or mission or something.  

I don’t know.  

But I became a fixer.  

When all the chips fall and the house of cards comes crashing down, I am that person you will want to help you clean it up. 

I am the most focused and the most productive during those times.  

Everyday, the mundane life of just existing makes me restless and I become unhappy. 

Because I am unhappy.

That is the truth.

I am unhappy with my life.

I am unhappy with where I am at this time in my life. I never had plans or dreams of grandeur but I did want the basics. 

I wanted love, home, a family and peace.

It seems simple, but for me it’s not.  

It is hard and complicated. 

Especially when you are building this with someone that doesn’t match you.  

Love shouldn’t be hard. 

That’s what they say.  

But it is hard. 

If it wasn’t hard there wouldn’t be thousands of books written about love, movies about love, songs about love, art about love and wars over love.

Love is the hardest for some people in our lives and so easy for others.

And thankfully that is the case.  

There has to be some easy love for us to know that it is out there.

I was always trying to make my hard love easy and good.

But I never could because I just couldn’t.  

I don’t know why and that is what I have to try and figure out.  

There was something in me my entire marriage that was resisting the love.  

And I think it was because I knew it wasn’t the love I needed.  

And oh did I ever want it to be.  

I thought I needed love that I had to chase.  

A love that made me never feel good enough.  

I never felt desired or wanted.

I always felt like you had settled.  

That I was ‘good enough’ to marry, because I would make your life easier.

But you made my life so much harder. 

I came into this relationship at my strongest and best self.  

You must have seen that.  

You must have known.  

And you wanted a piece of that perhaps. 

 Or not.  

I don’t know.  

All I know is that as the years went on the pieces of me started to fall away. 

Piece by piece.  

I felt it.

I saw it.

Life got harder and harder.

Nothing ever felt easy or smooth.  

It all felt hard and rough. 

Like we didn’t deserve goodness.  

That’s how we always felt.  

What a horrible way to live.  

How could you ever possibly succeed with this feeling of worthlessness? 

And with that feeling we just clung to each other because really who else would have us?  

Two people that stayed because it was better to know the uncomfortable with someone than to shift and move and grow into the new.

It’s all so exhausting

Even just writing this feels so depressing.  

I am glad it is over.

I am glad that I am in this little apartment.

I am glad that I am alone.

Why?

Because I know it had to end.

I know it wasn’t right or good.

I know I will get better and goodness is going to come my way.

I know it.

And that is what is keeping me going.