Rediscovering

Chapter 1

I saw him walk down the hallway from his office to the bedroom, the room that we only go into when we sleep; at different times, for different lengths of time, with separate blankets and a pillow divider line between the two of us. There was something within the coloring of the skin along his neck, something in the way that he made sure not to make eye contact. He wore his pain like a favored stole, pulled tight, hidden beneath, cutting off his circulation. I knew it was bad. Exactly what "it" was.. I wasn't sure, but I knew that he was not doing well emotionally. But this had become a usual thing over the last 20 years. Anxiety, obsessions, depression, egg shells, snide little comments, pettiness, anger, and passive aggression the likes of which could win awards.

I hung up from the online voice chat that I had been in for hours while watching tv together with a friend that lived over 4000 miles away. It was something I did often. I had a completely different life online than I did in the world around me, but we will get into that more later. For now... let's get back to my getting up to go check on him.

I walked into the room and he was laying on the bed, his face drooping, the edges of his eyes red and if I looked close enough I could see the little start of watery pools form.

I sat down, swallowing past the golf ball in my throat. It wasn't often that he showed emotion to/around me. In a soft, caring tone I asked, "Hey... are you doing okay? What's going on?" The tears began to pop out over the edge of each lower eyelid and fall like weighted glass beads, splattering the black and white striped comforter on his side of the bed. "No... I'm.. I..." he took a couple of deep breaths and spat it out, "Mamma... I'm just not happy. I'm not ok at all."

If he had been standing it was here where the knees would have buckled and I would have had to move quickly to help him stand and not crash to the ground. Thankfully he was already sitting when the dam broke.

I wanted to reach out to him, he was clearly wrestling with something major, he was clearly in pain. But instead of swooping in, I just sat there and looked at him, ready to ask the questions I knew he needed me to ask.

I want you to take a good look at what was just said there. I didn't swoop in - because what was going through my head was a whirlwind of angry, passive aggressive things that had built up over 21 years of a Marriage that really had been broken before it really even had a chance to make it's first wobbly steps. There was so much toxic water under that bridge that I cringed at having to go anywhere near it.

Thoughts like... "oh God, what now? He really needs to change his medication. It isn't working like it used to. I have been telling him for years that he was at the max dose and needed to try another medication. Doesn't he ever get tired of the roller coaster? ." and "Fuck.. I know that his best friend died 8 months ago and since then he has been lost. But i cant super glue him together. He has to do that for himself. I have been doing it for 20 years. I'm exhausted. Make SOME kind of effort for yourself, dude. You have to do it for yourself." and probably the worst of them all, "If you ask him what's wrong he will need to unload it all, do you really want to deal with this? Do you really want to be there for him right now, after all the ways he hurts you on the daily? Do you have the compassion left?"

Again, the soothing, worried, caring voice tip toed out, "Talk to me. What's going on? I know that you are dealing with a lot of things right now, pulling at you. Pushing at you. I know that you are feeling the heaviness of Sean's loss still and grieving that. We can talk about those things, get them off your chest if you want, or we can talk about ways to change things. You aren't happy. How do we make you happy again? Do you know how to already? Or do you need to work through some things before you can get to that point?" The counselor in me was coming out. I wasn't his wife, I hadn't been his wife in years, not really. Only legally. I have been his life coach and counselor for over a decade and most recent... his roommate alone. We had been going through the motions for so long we didn't even know what was just part of the motions and what was real anymore. If there was anything real left. I mean, we weren't even friends at his point.

I couldn't be his shrink anymore. I just couldn't. I harbored too much hurt and anger inside where he was concerned that I couldn't be objective. He needed help from a third party that didn't harbor all of this disfunction towards him.

He nodded slowly, bit his lip, took in a deep breath and fixed his eyes on the stripes of the blanket beneath him... and after a long pause he said, voice strangled with emotion, "I think it needs to start with a divorce. I think we need to divorce."

He paused, waiting for my reaction, bracing himself mentally and physically for my reaction. Only there was nothing to brace for.

I took in a breath that matched his own, nodded back and said in that same voice of care, "Okay. Then lets begin with that."

There were a lot of things I knew that needed to change in both his life and mine. I knew that we were over, and had been for a very long time. But I also knew ... within that moment that the words left his mouth... that a weight heavier than I could ever have imagined in my life had been taken off of me, and suddenly when I took in a breath.. I felt it fill my lungs more completely than I had breathed in Y.E.A.R.S. What I didn't know was that for it having been the biggest breath I had ever remembered taking in my 49 years of life that now, a year later, that breath was nothing compared to how I breathe now. It was the first breath of a newborn, shaky, weak, but still those lungs were being used for the first time. And now I have the breaths of an Olympic Cross Country runner, mid race.... and I shock myself at each new turn as I learn just how much air I am learning to take in.

I had no idea how much change was coming. I knew that my whole life would change, but I had no way of knowing how much damage I needed to step out from before I could even think about walking into who I was going to become.

That was the start of my metamorphosis. The birthplace. Where I began to step out of the past, out of the pain, out of everything that had held me back and first started to test out the strength of newborn legs.

Before that moment I had been working on things internally. Planning loosely, ideas slowly forming, changes that I wanted to make but was not quite ready for. I knew that a crossroad was forming before me and that soon I would have to decide what path to take as the road that I had been on previously was coming to an end. I knew that, already. I had seen glimpses of what could be. Getting excited at the possibilities and terrified of having to be the one that would broach the topic that he just had. To be the one to say it was over. To assumedly destroy his whole life to save my own. There wasn't just one light at the end of the tunnel, there were many and they twinkled like glitter in sunlight. There was no reality where I would have walked away from all that sparkly unknown. I was drowning in place. If I didn't make a move soon.. I would die there.

Then his mouth formed the words and suddenly every previously closed door opened and light poured in.

I knew it was going to be hard work to rediscover "me" within the new world my life would become. I knew that there would be a lot of emotional unpacking to do. My mistake was assuming that I only had 20 years to unpack when the reality was that I had 49 years of baggage, damage, hurt, and disfunction that I didn't even know had accumulated. Things that had molded me into who I was, where I was, and why it was what it was. An entire lifetime.

You stasis is over now, my little butterfly. Time to break out of that cocoon, spread your wings and learn how to fly!

The cogs had already been moving, clicking this in place over here, pushing this out of place over there. Climbing over this hill and twisting to that direction, but it had been slow moving.. but here were were at the top, looking down and seeing as much of the roller coaster ahead that we could as the sun finally warmed the side of my face and blinded the tracks too far ahead.

In the past year I have cycled between throwing my hands in the air and screaming as it all roared full speed ahead and enjoyed the ride, and trying to look for the steering wheel or breaks.. desperately trying to control, assess, and think my path into being. Only to discover that my blueprints were too crumpled, folded, and spilled on to really do a good job on my own. Instead, I am having to relearn how to build. Discovering new ways, unlearning broken ways from the past and peeling off the duct tape and bubble gum in leu of higher quality steel that I can build firmly on for years to come. Healthy. Happy. Soaring high into the light itself.

But first... I needed to rediscover who I was, what I wanted, and how to get there.