Well.... it's not that easy moving on. I'm eight years into my journey and I can tell you it is not easy. Having a wonderful husband and four children to love have most certainly helped, but it is still not easy. Furthermore, not everyone can 'move on' in the same manner. Each perceived situation is different. I was dealing with intense feelings of betrayal and humiliation. My friend feels lost and confused. Neither of us ever received adequate explanation of why the relationship ended. One moment he was there, and the next moment he was gone.
For me, the best coping mechanism I could come up with in the immediate days afterward was the idea that he was dead - because that is what it felt like. One day he was in my world, and the next he wasn't. It didn't help matters that this person who I loved was actually still walking in this world, but since he was not communicating with me, it felt very much like he was gone...never to return. Then the odd thought came to me.. what happens to the love? I loved this person! I had just married him three weeks prior! What happens now?
My friend brought up the same question as well. She is currently fighting her way out of that black hole of loss. She loves him, and doesn't know how to stop - even after a years' time. Oh my goodness my heart just aches for her... because I lived this journey too. After months of living in that swirling vortex of "What now?", I found out the truth: he had left me for someone else - someone he had been with months before we got married. Now I had the reason I was looking for to stop loving him. It was such a relief to be able to cut that cord and offer myself the opportunity for a new life, and a new identity.
"L" is such a beautiful person - and she has done a lot of wonderful things in her life. She is an operating room nurse and frequently takes part in mercy medical operations. She uses her vacation time to travel to third world countries to offer her services. Last year she went to Haiti (and came home with a horrible lung infection) and Sierra Leone. I told her that I envied her in a way. She was now single, and would have the opportunity to travel and maybe make a new life for herself abroad. She told me she envied me: I had found love again and was a mother to four kids. I suppose the grass is always greener someplace else. It's not that I regret my life AT ALL - but I am sure, as many women can attest to, that once you are tied down with the burdens and responsibility of family, the looming desire for escape always haunts you. Whether it be at the bottom of a wine glass, the spa, MNO, the weekend get-away or (gasp) the milkman. For me, all I need is an hour or two of intelligent conversation to recharge my batteries. Thank goodness for that.
After three hours of sifting through our thoughts and feelings we both walked away feeling like a burden had been lifted. She is the first person I have been able to talk to - in all these eight years - about some of the deepest, darkest feelings I experienced, and still deal with from time-to-time. It is nice to have someone who truly understands what it feels like (apart from my mother). I was supposed to be there for her, but it ended up that we were there for each other.
On the way home, I had several thoughts swirling around in my head.
1. I still have a lot of healing to do. I operate in the fear mode on a daily basis. My biggest fear is that I will lose again. I feel paranoid at times - like I don't deserve this happiness and that 'life' will come along at any moment and take it all away from me. I'm afraid to get too close to people, because I will just get hurt again (and gosh this keeps happening!!). I'm afraid to share because of what people will think of me. It's nice to have the anonymity of the web. I try not to think of the handful of people I know who read this blog (hello to my four or five fans out there... well, you're family. You have to like me.) I try instead to think of the potential reader who maybe has a similar story to tell. Who needs to hear that she is not alone. Who needs to hear how someone else is trying to cope. That is how I try to convert my fear into love.
2. Love is neither created or destroyed. In answer to the question: "What happens to the love?", I think that it just changes form - similar to the concept of energy. Love is energy. The love you have for your child drives you to feed him, hug him, chase after him when he runs into the street, ache for him when he hurts and search endlessly for ways to make him happy. When you experience loss - either through death or divorce, that love just changes form. You channel that energy in another direction. You establish a memorial fund, you take on a new vocation, you devote that loving attention on yourself instead, for a time. I think that was how I found my release. I took that energy and I used it on myself. I painted walls. I bought new furniture. I lost weight. I read books. I went for hikes. I spent time with friends. I kept busy juggling three jobs.
3. I am a lucky, lucky girl to have been able to cross to the other side. I am lucky to have Dean, Jordan, Rylan, Owen and Colin in my life. And I am lucky that I had such wonderful family to lean on for support through all these years.
I know that "L"s journey is going to be a long and painful one. But her spirit will be strengthened by it, in time. And at some point, joy will return to her life. I know my spirit is strong and I 'feel' strong, but I also feel like life for me will be forever tarnished in a way that is difficult to describe. It is there that the fear resides. I have to acknowledge it every day and do my best to squash it.
Years ago, when I was living alone after the divorce, I would go out into the backyard late, late at night, and 'tell off' the Universe.
"You aren't going to beat me!"
"Years ago you sent a really, really crappy person into my life to teach me the lessons I needed to learn in this lifetime. Um....thanks? Can the lesson be over now?"
"I deserve to be happy!!!! Please? Just a little?"
"Why!!! What is the fucking point of loving someone if they are just going to hurt you?!?"
"Are you listening?"
My neighbors probably thought I was some crazy woman telling off her aspen trees, night after night. Then again, they were crazy eBay hoarders who had a permanent dumpster in their driveway.
but.
The Universe listened. Damn the Universe and it's smug knowitty-all-ness. Now I have to make amends every night to the Universe and acknowledge that everything happens for a reason, and you shouldn't really question it, and thank you for sending Dean into my life, and thank you for loving me and giving me the capacity to love others, despite all of the other crap you've made me put up with.
Oh. And thank you for chocolate...good stuff.
And for coffee. Of which I have had entirely too much of this week.
