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I forgot to live my own life. Marriage was a long time to be away from myself.
I didn’ t feel loved for who I was— especially not in my marriage— so I believed I never would be. I checked out. Went to sleep. And was awakened only by an explosion of epic proportions.
After the dust settled, I had a choice. I could either stay numb and go back to sleep. Or, I could face my fears. I could embrace change. I could stop living my life in reaction to others. Own up to desire.
And so the journey began.
The journey to knowing, deep in my essence, that I am loved. No matter what I do or don’ t do. Even if I don’ t do anything I will be loved.
But how? I needed courage. I found it in my body.
My body— flesh and bone— a treasure chest. Its cellular secrets under lock and key until the moment they were ready to be freed. The thaw came that way: an instant, a window, an opening. If I’ d left sooner, I would not have been able to stay away. If I’ d stayed a moment longer, it would have been radical self-betrayal.
I remember leaving for the last time. I bought a clean new mattress just days before, knowing it was a last offering to a lost time. I quietly told the truth to someone safe. There was the night I thought I heard him coming for me— first hope, then fear, then resignation. I remember finally asking for help. I remember when I didn’ t think all the help was going to help. I remember when it finally did. I remember all the hours
around the hours. Those hours building the skeleton of a leaving. Those hours of bone.
I thought it was just about a marriage ending. But it was about so much more. Mourning the marriage, but also mourning the self I had been. Making room for the one I was becoming. That one— the new me— who could not go back. Who could not survive in such a dry climate.
Or could she? She who so much wanted to go back. How to hold on to that part of me? Simply hold on to it and not act?
Uncertainty. The tension of opposites. How, just when we think we have landed, we are actually further unearthed. Ground must be restored, but not through stillness. Stillness will not satisfy. I discovered life as breath: fluidity is the only ground we can seek.
I remember the instant my marriage was over. Feeling like a failure for not fixing him. For not making the marriage work. For staying too long or not long enough. Waiting for him to sign the divorce papers. And also secretly wishing he would break down the door. Come back for me. How the
HEALTH & WELLNESS
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