As Strong

I tried my best to live my life right. I didn't do drugs, barely drank while raising our 2 daughters. I worked overnights so that they wouldn't grow up with others. Not like we could afford daycare, anyhow. I took pride in being their main caretaker. I wanted them to learn from ME and YOU...and boy did they!

We began our lives together very young as high school sweethearts do. Those days back then were full of adventures. We were rebellious, but not the trouble making kind. They tried to control everything about us. We had to fight hard to make it. Love bloomed quickly and so did the trials and tribulations. I felt that there was something working against us from the start. We pulled through, and I thought we'd make it until death do us part, or as you called it...TDDUP.

I never understood why happiness and financial stability wouldn't last long. The dark cloud that started with us, would rear its ugly head again and make those happy days and financial gains deplete. I never understood why. Even now, I don't know.

I was in it for the long haul as a good wife should've been. We've seen many family members have many difficulties but somehow managed to stay together and see it through...but not you.

I was your loyal subject and I put all my faith and trust in you. I leaned on you many times and maybe I cried too many times on your shoulder but I felt safe in doing so. You rarely reached for emotional support from me. I figured it was just your strength and your ability to shrug off any negativity. Sometimes you appeared cold-hearted when you avoided to feel any hurt or sadness. I wore my feelings on my sleeves at all times. I tried to learn not to do so, but that's just who I am. It would take me years to learn to accept that part of me and that it isn't a bad character flaw. It would also take me many years to realize that just because a person may appear strong and put together and not show sadness or tears, doesn't mean that is a good character trait. The more we fought and the more I'd cry from being insulted or worse...I realized that maybe the man I'd grown up with wasn't who I'd thought him to be. Over and over, you'd say you were sorry but would repeat the same bad behavior. That isn't how apologies are supposed to work.

I wasn't perfect, by no means. I had to work on my temper and quick angry tendencies due to my less than perfect childhood tragedies. I wanted to be a better person, mostly for our girls. I didn't want them to grow up in a dangerous home as I did and sometimes like how you did, too. I wanted them to know unconditional love from us. We taught them to speak their minds and to speak up if they witnessed or experienced situations that weren't right. They knew we loved them, we made sure to tell them everyday. You were the sweetest daddy to them while they were tiny. When the teen years hit, you weren't sure how to handle them and their crazy mood swings...but I understood. Not like you had ever been a crazy hormonal female, so I tried to give you grace when you might've mishandled a conversation with them. And they definitely loved you so much, no matter what.

Fast forward many years into the future. I was given a diagnosis that I never expected. Two years prior, you'd been showing yourself in a different way. You weren't happy with us anymore. I prayed for strength in us to make it. I almost begged the Lord for my husband to have a softer heart and kinder words...but that isn't how it worked. Yet, I kept my faith strong!

I underwent life-saving surgery followed by rounds of poison running through my veins that ended up changing my appearance and ruining my physicality and visibility. Yet, I executed a strong front to others.

You were physically around to help, but the emotions had long gone before and left town. I needed help! I should've been able to reach for my husband, my life partner without hesitation...but you made it difficult and quite abusive. I cried many nights of confusion. Like, damn! Doesn't he see what this illness is doing to me? I suppose God had a plan for me, even though I didn't understand and I still don't understand - why he spared me.

When the day came to end the poisonous treatments, it should've been a day of celebration but it wasn't. He wasn't going to do anything to celebrate my life or to allow himself to make me feel uplifted in any kind of way. It just didn't make sense to me what caused his heart to freeze over.

Two weeks before Thanksgiving that year, he walked out. My hair had barely grown in just enough to cover the bald spots that I had to cover all summer. I had no job, no paycheck, no energy to do much at that time. He turned his back on me and our youngest daughter who had only been graduated from high school just over a year. Our oldest, at the time, lived out of town, so she wasn't here to deal much with the sadness he left us with.

I was devastated, to say the least. How could this person who I dedicated my life to just walk away? Cancer wasn't enough to reinsure our TDDUP! But all in all, I have had to live my life everyday as to appear as if I have all my shit together. Live Strong, move forward, be happy, love myself more, accept what is and give it all to God. Advice from others, words most definitely easier said than done.

Sometimes I don't want to live days like I am a strong woman getting over 30 years of wasted time and energy. I want to YELL & SCREAM & KICK & PUNCH & act like the biggest damned FOOL for all the shit he put me through!! But society has a way of not allowing a woman to do such behaviors. The men get easily excused for theirs but why not us, too?

He appears to others to be put together and happy, more like fake as fuck! He's told me that his life is happier alone. He doesn't miss me at all or anything I did for him in our many years together, OUCH! So, why do I still miss him being here with me when he was the toxin that kept me down? I don't get it!!?? Maybe I never will. No switch to turn off...I guess if it's on long enough it will become wary and tire itself out, eventually.

I'd like to add before I go, I filed the divorce! I got it started when all he did was threaten me with it. I did it!! So now, when he tells me or yells it at me, "That's why I divorced you!" I quickly remind him that he did no such thing as I metaphorically wag my finger at him.

I decided to do it for me. I know him better than he knows himself sometimes. I knew he'd be waiting to throw it in my face when he felt the inappropriate time to do so.

I pray that soon my heart will mend all the holes he left behind.

I aim to NOT ONLY appear stronger but to ACTUALLY BE STRONGER as the sky is pink!!