Divorce Heralds Crushing Realizations

Whether you want them, are ready for them, anticipate them, or not...they come.

Friday, November 29th, 2024

Tonight, I am painting my bedroom, headset on, music lightening the task.
The brush stops, feelings rise up, a fitful filly finding her feet within.
They have caught me by surprise…
Those long silent emotions, submerged for years by a thick blanket of survival.

Music slides into the lock, twisting my rusted skeleton, cracking bones.
Momentary joy, truest reflection of my authentic self, crackles forth.
Mighty and mobilizing, it straightens my spine, in a burst of recognition.
Me. Me! ME! That girl — I am she, SHE who survived.

Hot anger — visceral, sharp, heart-stopping, breath-catching, mood-shifting.
How DARE he?!
Hands tremble, brush sinks into thick white goo, air whooshes in and out, in and out.
How could he?! Who (who?!) crushes brightness, love, optimism and joy…on purpose?

Tonight. Raw. Anger. Asks.
”Will you give ME a permanent place in your soul?”

Answer I, “No. Anger hurts me, first and only. Abuse myself? NO! Not I, I cry!”
Answer I, “But I will let myself feel it, accept it’s righteousness, and then — I WILL release it.”
Answer I, “I will regain my light, I will heal the wounds, I will refute the lies.”
Answer I, “I am not so stupid, so naïve, so ignorant, so _________, as he said I was.”

— Am I?

No.
Never.
Not I.
Not my loving heart, my kind mind, my gentle hands or my earnest soul.

“Here! Here I am! Alive yet!” I gasp, choking on thick vapors of doubt, doubt, doubt and more doubt — a lifetime of missiles hurled wantonly, an endless barrage — leaving insecurity in its wake, sharp and lacerating, scattered and embedded into my body, my firmament, emotional shrapnel.
How heinous, the destruction of another’s sense of self-worth, and for what?
”Help?” I hear myself whisper, hoping against hope, to be found, met, caught and held by new, strong & loving arms.

Hope stays, swells — a dangerous, painful ache, stretching my soul back into shape.
Harried and fragile, a scream percolates, fear shredding me from the inside out.
Hoarse and breathless, throat tight with un-shed tears, I trudge forward, wondering, wondering, wondering, “Am I unlovable? Will I be forever alone?”

Maybe, but only God knows the future. I shall not waver.

Resolutely, I push against the door, move into the light, tentative but commmitted, even as I…
Remember the pain.
Recognize the risk.
Recoil from fear.
Resist doubt.

My finger taps the screen of my iPhone. Music flows into my ears. I step away from my keyboard, wipe the excess from my paintbrush, and swipe upward. Fresh white paint covers the old, worn and torn, wounded and scarred. A new life beckons…

Today, tonight, and tomorrow, I decide. I pledge. I vow. I accept this challenge, this invitation to greater self-knowledge, these lessons abundantly offered to me, waiting to be noticed, considered, gained and inculcated into the new life I am choosing.

And please, God, let me move through this challenge with Grace.