The Unraveling

Ever find a little string on your sweater, think it’s nothing important, begin to pull, and suddenly you’re sweater has completely unraveled?

Ever have that happen in life?

I’m going to take this little coal-fired life train we’ve been chugging along on and put it on the bullet train track for a bit. You don’t need all the gory details, and I don’t need that kind of therapy any more. All you need to know is that my life sweater unraveled. And, just like when your sweater falls apart and you’re left standing naked, I was there figuratively. It was cold.

We moved from Orlando back to Tallahassee and within a matter of months, the divorce was final. As divorces go, the logistics were easy. The emotions and trauma, not. I’m not sure, outside of the death of a family member, that there’s anything more difficult in life. After moving six times in three years, we owned nothing more than our vehicles and personal items, had a negligible amount of money, and no minor children. That was the “easy” part. Learning a new way of life, navigating communications, and knowing our son was trapped and drowning in the wake, was suffocating. I felt like my body was blistered and oozing, and the only way to keep living was to work harder. That, I can do.

Time heals a lot, or at least softens your thoughts, and at some point, hopefully, blurs the memories into sighs instead of daggers into your eyeballs. At this point, I don’t even get bristled when I think about the un-truths that were spoken about me. It just truly doesn’t matter. What people say about me says more about them.

I found a place to live, took a deep breath, and started to re-group. It was difficult, yet so easy. I’d been self-sufficient for a long time, so I knew how to do it. The most telling thing I noticed was that almost immediately my hair stopped falling out. It had been barely hanging on for a couple of years, fortunately not noticed because my curls are big and messy and no one could tell how thin it had gotten. Something so simple as my hair not falling out gave me hope.

I wasn’t always a good wife, not always a good mother, and found it difficult, for various reasons (not all my fault), to have friends over those last few years. I failed. Failed at many, many things. I have to live with that. Nobody needs to remind me, but thank you very much for trying. More than one has tried to keep it fresh on my mind.  You can stop now.  I got it.

Starting over isn’t that hard when you have very little.  Everything I owned fit into a garage apartment, and the furniture wasn’t even mine. Clothes, necessities, and the few pieces (like a cedar chest and kitchen table), made life simple – and that was a great place to be.  I was living in a sweet friend’s converted garage and had the safety of someone looking out for me, yet the privacy I needed.  It was a great temporary situation.  It gave me the time I needed to finalize and prepare, sort and organize, burn and rise.

The next chunk of life was beginning.  Time was marked and I hadn’t succumbed to what I thought was going to be the end of my capacity to function.  I had taken the deep breath, exhaled, and taken step one.  It was hard, miserable, devastating, sad.  So sad.  My counselor was sick of me, I’m sure.

But a new day came, every day.  It wasn’t always two steps forward, one step back.  Sometimes I actually went more than one step in the right direction.  It was slow and painful, but it happened.

I’m not proud of it, but I am no longer ashamed of it.  I have hardened, leathered, calloused, petrified. I am not the same person I was, and that is good.  Good, for I have changed in so many ways for the better, and good, because I have grown into a woman who understands more, relaxes more, is far less judgmental, and has accepted defeat.  It’s a process – a very humbling process.  I have asked for forgiveness, apologized, and come to the conclusion that I will never receive forgiveness from some people.  That is alright.  It keeps my mistakes fresh, and hopefully I won’t repeat.

The initial dust of the trauma settled and I was trying to heal. I’m sure there are those who wish I would never.  That’s alright, too.  I was navigating a new lifestyle and not sure how to function.  My work was a saving grace, as was my original nuclear family.  Always there.  But, perhaps the most perplexing, often-happening event, was the comments I received from friends.  The support was overwhelming, and yet incredibly frustrating.  If you saw everything you say you did, why didn’t you say something sooner.  That was a tough one to swallow.  Still is. I lost some friends, was surprised at a few who ditched me, and I also chose to let some folks go.  Sometimes you just need an extra level of separation.  I miss some folks, don’t even think about others, but there’s not one that I wouldn’t be there for.  It just gets complicated.

The hardest to take, though, is knowing things, un-truths, have been spoken about me, and even spoken to my child.  Shame on you.  Things that were, or should have been, off limits to a child.  Shame on you.

I may still need a little therapy on that one.

But, Spring had arrived, new life begun, pages turned.  It was time to get on with it.  And I did.  And I don’t regret that part.  It was the best part.  Stay tuned…….