It's taken a long time to get here, but it happened quickly all the same.
I married my husband 8 years ago this November, met him and began dating 11 years ago. In 2005 I was a different woman then I am today. So many terms of my life have changed. Not all for the better, but it the forward progression that most of us see through our lifecycle. The stops and starts, a few moves forward and one back, that make up our evolution. When we met I was idealistic, hard headed and independent. I believed I had seen what I needed to see of the world to make an informed decision about the woman I was and what I wanted for my future. In truth, my husband was the first solid decision I had ever made when looking at a partner and by far the most practical choice. I had years of misspent youth chasing relationships that seemed more valuable because of the challenges they presented. I had never allowed myself the opportunity to sit back and let it come to me easily. I am sure there is a deep rooted reason underlying my need to prove I was worthy of a challenging love, but at the time there wasn't anything deep or meaningful about the relationships I found myself in. When my husband walked into my life I wasn't expecting anything and wasn't looking.
In the beginning he was persistent and consistent; a comforting force in my own life. At the time the truth was I was in love with someone else and that love wasn't met in return. I wasn't honest about it (with myself) until just a few years ago; so I certainly didn't see it then. It is only now by looking in the rearview mirror that I can see the picture unfolding so plainly. The reality is that that other relationship doesn't have anything to do with my marriage falling apart now, but it is still interesting that when I look back on this metaphorical house we built in a way it came to be because I was unknowingly running for shelter from a broken heart.
I'm running away again. This time I don't know where to seek protection or when I can find that shelter and that is the terrifying part. There isn't any one thing. This wasn't a marriage riddled with infidelities discovered or addictions that went unencumbered, rather it was a marriage with it's difficulties, like most. The condition that comes from living your life and trying to do more, accomplish more, become MORE. I don't look back and think the choices wrong, but I see what got us here. This big hurdles that we had to move past that slowly dulled the edge of the blade; eliminated any passion and deteriorated the roots that held us together. If this was a game, a true game, where people keep score and there are defined winners and losers, I am sure that an objective audience could stand at the sidelines and tell me who was at fault, but the truth is we both have lost. I don't believe in the tally, and now that a decision has been reached don't want to dwell on how we have gotten here. Right now I am in survival mode. It is the reason I am writing this blog; exposing my feelings, trying to communicate somehow / some way where I am and how I got to be here. This is a new type of normal for me with so much of my life feeling exactly as it has been with the major difference of my future not seeming so certain or predictable. I don't feel angry, just scared. I am scared of the unknown, scared of the toll it will take on my health, scared of how this experience will change me.... I am readying myself to move out of my home, a home we built, and can only focus on taking care of my most basic necessities right now. What I am hoping for is to find some practical answers before I go searching for the deep questions surrounding what got me, us, here.
I am looking for a short term place to live now. Somewhere I can stay for the next few months until a condo my mom owns here in Phoenix comes available for me to move into. I have 2 dogs I am going to take with me. They are more important then anything on the list of items we have to settle on. I struggle with communicating with my loved ones, not because I don't value their support, or think I need it, but because I just really want to answer the basic questions of how to take care of myself before involving anyone else in the turmoil. I worry about moving out of the house without the 2 dogs and somehow this situation becoming ugly and me not being able to get them back when the time comes. I also worry that they could be used as leverage in this scenario, a way if this turns into a cliche divorce saga that he would have leverage. I am praying right now to keep an open heart and an open mind as well as an active will so that when the right opportunity presents itself I will see it for what it is and act upon the chance. I have never been grateful that I don't have children, I wanted one, but my health hasn't made that possible. I sit here this morning though grateful that I don't have another person to worry about being played in a game of chess. My mind is all over the place.
