The hardest thing…

It’s been awhile since I have had the courage to write. Not because I’m scared of what I would say, but more because of how vulnerable I’d have to be with myself. My life has taken roads these last few months that I was confident a year ago I would never experience. Confidence is a funny thing. You can be absolutely sure of something and the whole time really have no idea if what you are confident of is actually true….or you are just lying to yourself unaware. At 36 I would have said I’ve experienced a lot, seen a lot, hurt a lot, and been tried a lot. But my whole life pales in comparison to the heartbreak, devastation, and monumental journey that is now in front of me. “How will I even survive?”  is the question that haunts me daily. I know that I will, the same way everyone always survives…one small moment at a time constantly breathing in and out until eventually you don’t have to remind yourself how. But it is the quality of my surviving that I fear. Will I ever be able to hope again? Trust again? Feel at peace again? Will I ever look back and say “in the end, I’m thankful for how it turned out?” Or will I become a shadow of what I once was? A hollowed existence of the faithful heart always believing the best of everyone? Will I become bitter and jaded, or empty and numb? Can I somehow come out of all of this still able to believe in love, myself, and God?

The hardest thing I have ever had to do was to stare into the eyes of my four beautiful children and tell them that their world has been broken, that I could not protect them from the one thing I vowed to protect them from, that somehow after all that we’ve been through it wasn’t enough. To tell them their daddy doesn’t love me anymore and has decided to move out while somehow still convincing them that his love for them is forever and wont change just because it did for me.

And yet….I am excruciatingly aware that the hardest part has yet to come. I now have to figure out how to coparent with someone who has ripped my heart out, flipped my world upside down, and thrown away everything we have spent the last 20 years building together. I have to figure out how to continuing living without my best friend, my husband, and the love of my life. I have to figure out how to not hate and villianize the person who said “to death do us part” and then left…I have to figure out how to not hope he will come back so that I can somehow move on…I have to figure out how to not love someone I vowed to love forever. I have to figure out how to not “always see the best in him” and somehow accept the reality of the choices he’s making…I have to figure out how to be alone when I have spent the last 20 years learning how to be “together”. I have to learn how to encourage my kids to have relationship with their father and trust that he loves them and will follow through on his promises to them when I honestly have no idea if its true. I have to hold my kids while they cry that they miss their daddy and they don’t understand. I have to teach my kids to not see the world through rose-colored glasses, while somehow still being hopeful and not become wounded and bitter adults. I have to make it through lonely weekends while they are with their dad. I have to learn how to not be hurt when they want to be with their dad and not me. I have to get up every day and keep breathing. I have to figure out how to be a single mom(again), go back to work, raise 4 kids, homeschool, take care of the house, find the strength to cook something other than Ramen noodles, and still find time to heal my own heart and build friendships.

I feel utterly incapable of getting through this. I miss my husband so much I feel like I can’t breathe…It breaks my heart that he is not the person he used to be…that he has chosen this path for the both of us…I desperately need friends and feel paralyzed at the thought of people “invading my life”…..I wish I could wake up from this nightmare….

It’s not the memories inside my head that drive me crazy. It’s the new memories without you that push me over the edge. – Sandra Homer