For Everything There is a Season...

My life has changed in so many ways over the last two years. More times than I can count, I thought about posting and for whatever reason(s) decided against it. So now I am ready to come clean. I'm tired of hiding and trying to live a life in which parts of me are kept secret. First, a timeline:

July, 2007: Things with R's niece, whome we had raised to an adult, came to a head. I had to tell her to leave our house because of a major violation of our private space and her complete indifference to what she had done. Her disrespect reached a level that was no longer tolerable. The result was a widening chasm between me and my husband that was never resolved.

August, 2007: I was re-evaluating my marriage and wondering what God was expecting of me. Things were becoming increasingly unbearable and I was falling apart. I asked Him if I was supposed to stay or go and I heard Him say, "You are free to leave." I felt so relieved that He wasn't expecting me to stay in a situation that was tearing me apart. It didn't mean that I was going to immediately take that as my out and divorce my husband. It just meant that I could start thinking about taking care of myself. I began recognizing feelings of inadequacy and wondered what had happened to the woman who was unafraid to take on the world and believed that she could do anything. I made a conscious choice to set a time limit of one year for things to begin drastically changing in my marriage or I would have to consider separating to save myself.

September, 2007: Became so depressed that I was barely functioning. I was ready to risk all the years of schooling by simply dropping out of my master's program in the last leg of the journey. I could hardly get up in the morning and found it next to impossible to do what was expected of me by my internship site. While not suicidal, I was checking out of life. After talking to my therapist, I decided to see the doctor and once again try an antidepressant. In the past, others had not worked, had walled off other parts, or made me feel even more depressed. It was hell coming off of them back then, but I simply did not have a choice this time around. If I didn't have some kind of medical intervention, I was going to wind up hospitalized. It took five days of not eating, sleeping, showering, or functioning before the side effects started tapering off.

October, 2007: I took my licensing exam and passed!!!!

December, 2007: The month from hell. My husband was hospitalized for several days just before Christmas with strep, bronchitis, and a multitude of other symptoms. In everything I did, I was thinking with sadness about the possibility that in a year, we might not be together if things didn't change. He came home on Christmas Eve and the following day, while spending time with his family, things seemsed so good. I have two specific memories of that day: 1) hugging and kissing him in the kitchen of his mom's house and thinking that I didn't want our marriage to end-I loved him; and 2) looking around at some of his family members and realizing that I would miss them if things did not work out. I was especially reminded of his brother-in-law who had died the previous July.

A few days later, we attended the wedding of a friend's son. We danced together and had a wonderful evening. I was thinking about how much I loved him and felt a deep sorrow for the distance that had grown over the years.

New Years Eve came with a bombshell. We went to dinner and in my attempts to talk together about the past year and the year to come, he told me he wanted a divorce. I was shocked, hurt, and angry. He didn't even have the guts to come right out and say the word. All he could say was that he couldn't have another year like the one just over and that we both deserved to be happy and it wasn't going to happen together. I had to ask him several times if he was asking for a divorce. He finally said, "Yes." I remember thinking,"So this is what it's like when your spouse says they want a divorce." I noticed it wasn't awful, but there was a pit in my stomach. I felt empty. I realized that God had taken the decision about whether to stay or go out of my hands because R had made it for me.

January, 2008: I moved out of the master bedroom and bath. He seemed to think that even though we were divorcing, it should not prevent us from having sex and cuddling at night. That was just too much. I found out that within a few days of his asking for a divorce, he signed up for Yahoo! personals.

March, 2008: This month deserves a posting all its own. Suffice it to say that I went to Hawaii for a work-related conference and became physically and emotionally involved with a married man. The day I came home, my husband asked if we could go to counseling together. While I was gone, he had become lonely and wanted to do something to try and work things out. I became stubborn, dug in my heels, and told him it was too late. I was coming down from an incredible high that included someone showing care and concern that I had never experienced in my marriage and could not even fathom the emotional rollercoaster counseling with my husband would entail. Each time we had attended counseling in the past, it had failed miserably and we ended up worse off than before because more truth had been spoken. I struggle now with what might have happened if I had, in fact, been more willing to try at that time.

April, 2008: My mother-in-law became seriously ill and passed away. I was caught between wanting to support my husband during that time and going with him to the hospital, and feeling like a total fraud because I was playing the good wife when he was divorcing me. This was when his family found out about the impending divorce. I was able to be there for him when he was at home, and did all I could to make it easier for him to spend as much time as possible with his mother. I took up the responsibility of handling all the food for the funeral. While it was incredibly uncomfortable because I was on my way out of the family (and not by my choice, mind you) it was also important for me to show my love and concern for him and his family as a whole.

May, 2008: I defended my portfolio as the final step towards my graduate degree. I passed, with no revisions necessary. Started working at a counseling agency and was also offered a position at my internship site.

July, 2008: Met with the lawyer and began the divorce proceedings. We decided to use a mediator to iron out all the details. We walked out of there angrier than before and it took several attempts for he and I to negotiate and renogiate the details.

August, 2008: Officially graduated from Governors State University with my Masters in Marriage and Family Counseling!

September, 2008: Moved into my co-op Labor Day weekend. I was helped by my soon-to-be ex and his brother. Took several weeks to get unpacked and settled into a routine. The divorce was final on the 24th. Afterwards, my ex and I went to lunch and ran errands together. Looking back, I wish that I had began the emotional divorce much sooner, but hadn't realized how attached to him I continued to be.

October, 2008: Hawaii Boy showed his true colors and decided to pull "into his shell" because his life was messed up and he needed to figure things out. His timing was just perfect...a week before Halloween, even though he knew what that meant for me. Again, another posting is necessary. That month, I went to dinner with my ex and told him exactly how I was feeling about him and what interfered with our being together. He wanted to just "enjoy the fact that we were getting along without fighting." Not enough for me.

November, 2008: Went to a friends for Thanksgiving dinner and then over to the ex's. He made dinner for his family and invited me to come by. I couldn't leave fast enough because he was drunk. He wanted me to stay over because it was late. I couldn't do it.

December, 2008: This is the second year that December just seems to suck. Invited the ex out for dinner for another "talk." This time around, he wasn't as open to my honesty. He became defensive and at one point even suggested that I go to lunch with my mother, one of the perpetrators! He also stated that we would probably never know what had happened and if the ritual abuse actually happened. Of couse some parts of me wanted to strangle him but held back. I told him that I couldn't be around him anymore because it hurt too much because of my feelings and my desire to BE with him.

Shortly thereafter, God challenged me to "let him go and that He couldn't do what He needed to with R if I was holding on to him." I wrestled for days because of my fear that I wouldn't get R back. But I also knew that God loved him more than I ever could and that no matter what, God loved me too. I am still struggling with letting go.

A couple weeks later my ex invited me to come for Christmas Eve dinner and I had to decline. I had a meltdown the day after Christmas. A week later, (another New Years Eve) he told me he had started dating a girl from IN. I felt shocked, hurt, dismayed, betrayed, angry, helpless.

January, 2009: Had my pastor and his wife over for dinner. We had a really great talk and I was challenged by a question posed: "How does a person change his/her thinking when they are used to thinking about themselves in a certain way?" In other words, how do I go from thinking of myself as a spouse in relation to R and thinking of myself as a single person? From that point on, I started stating out loud that I am single.

I started teaching a developmental psych class for my alma mater. Two classes under my belt. Think I'm gonna like it.

So now you are up to date with the basics of my life over the last year or so. For some of these things I plan to go into more detail over time. I just needed to get back into this for now. I know that it's not likely that anyone I know will be reading this anytime soon. I guess that's okay. Not sure I'm ready for some of them to know so many intimate details. But at the same time, I don't want to allow the enemy to use shame to keep me quiet, especially since I have been forgiven and I know that I am FREE in Christ! That is my identity. Not one of guilt and shame. So here we go. Hold on everybody!