The Lonely Person in a Crowd

I can't help it. Every weekend with the children I'm so excited; I feel like my life is normal again, happy even. Then they have to go back to their dads and I'm immediately sad without them. It's like part of me is gone. It's like falling in love and then having that love ripped out of your hands. It's when they leave that the "unwrapped" me comes out. The raw, deeply hurting girl whose heart is still broken over the loss of her marriage. I was made to feel like it was all my fault. For years. Just seeing him tonight was hard. See, part of me misses him and part of me has this broken heart.

I feel like I have to compartmentalize my feelings as a way to deal with them. Especially the feelings of loss and hurt. During the week I focus on work and my time with the children. Then, at other times, in the weekends I allow myself time to think. On Monday nights I continue to "think" and to talk to my counselor. Like clockwork every Monday.

I don't think that I will ever adjust to this divorce. Part of me will always love him. Part of me might always hate him but I hope not. I've been through other periods of my life in which I held onto resentments for years and it took a toll on my health. I sit in church, surrounded by people I do not know, a lonely person in a crowd. I listen to the pastor exhort men to love their wives and I feel like a failure. I hear the pastor's wife talk about loving her husband and I am profoundly aware of how alone I really am.

I like to think of myself as a tough cookie. Over the years I've been through what has felt like one season of hurt after another. Still I cling to God for hope. For He is the only real hope there is, for anything or for anyone. I've been knocked down again and again and I still keep getting back up. Some would call that foolish, others might call it brave. Me, it's just the way it is.

My reality is that I struggle with profound sadness each and every day. I've struggled with depression for most of my adult life. The only real relief I had was when I first got married; I was giddy and happy and in love. Then periods of happiness around the births of our children. Then just long periods of hurt, anger and the most miserable marriage ever. I lived in a loveless marriage for years because I felt like I could not support myself, that he would take the kids, that I wasn't qualified for this or that. I lived domestic abuse. There. It's out there. It's not pretty and it's not popular but it's all there. I was abused by my husband emotionally and psychologically for our whole marriage. This probably sounds horrible but there were times that I wished that he would just hit me, because in my head if a man ever hit a woman, she should just leave. What I didn't realize was that I was living inside a marriage where I was being hit, but on a deeper and more hurtful level.

It still boggles my mind. On one hand I say that I was a victim of domestic abuse but on the other hand it is not what defines me. I cannot let it define me. I can choose to let it change me into a more loving and caring person. The enemy wants to drag me down. How can I BE one thing and then the other at the same time? I ask you. How?

I often feel like yelling. Out loud, about my life and about the demise of my marriage. I want to yell out about how much I hate that my kids are over there with him now and I am home alone. Home in this stupid apartment. I feel like a visitor in my own life.

The emotion passes and I'm here, alone. Trying to decide if I can be alone and be okay. Part of my heart wants to crawl inward and never open up again. Part of me knows that if I do that, he wins. Evil wins. So I sit here at the crossroads between my past and my future. My kids depend on me to overcome what is put before me. So them, I'm their super hero who can do anything and be anything. I feel like a super hero whose cape is torn with jagged edges. My super hero powers are no longer mine.

I want my children to know ME. To know their mom, the good, the bad and the ugly. I want to show them that even though life is hard, God is good and can be counted on. That I can be counted on, for them today and for their whole lives. That is one promise I made when they were conceived, actually way before that. I promised to love them, no matter what, all of my life.

I feel like maybe I've had my chance. Right now I'm focusing on the children and their future. But the selfish part says "what about MY future?" Tonight that's about all the thinking and expressing that I can muster. I'm signing off now. Perhaps next time I will have a more upbeat time. But if you're to know me, you have to know both sides of me. All the sides of me. The last person who knew all my sides rejected me. Beware of what you sign up for!