Then She Found Me.

What a great movie. Haley and I watched this movie last night. It was nothing Oscar worthy. But somehow it touched me, it seemed as if it was meant for me. There were a lot of parallels. Her (Helen Hunt) husband left her, because he 'didn't want that life'. Wow. What is it about a life filled with family, children, a home, responsibilities, that makes men run? Well, ok, to be fair, some men. The husband (Matthew Broderick) was a child, everything was all about him. She had a hard time moving on, loved him, mourned the dreams they (she) dreamed. And then she met someone (Colin Firth). Someone totally different, someone like her. She said in the movie, "He sees me". The moral of the story is this, you may not get what you dream, or want, or in the time frame you wanted it in, but maybe if that is the case, it might not have been what you needed or truly what you wanted to begin with. Listen to your heart and you just might get something better.

Yes I know. I skipped writing on my birthday. It was an ok birthday as birthdays go. Nothing special. I did have dinner with my mom, grandma, and Haley. That was nice.  I've officially left my 'early thirties' behind. Ugh. Honestly, I will not age gracefully. I think part of that is because I've cheated myself out of so many years of happiness. I'm starting over, and don't misunderstand. I am grateful that I woke up in my thirties as opposed to my 40s or 50s or maybe never. I've come to realize that its not too late to carve out some happiness in this life. I've been given the chance to do that.

The last few days have been extremely tough. I won't lie. Emotionally it's been draining and will continue to be so. I am less then 48 hours away from becoming a single, divorced mother of one. Ick. Part of me shudders at the thought. This was not going to be my life. I try to remember what life it was going to be exactly. Not my mothers. She stayed with the same man, my father, and was miserable. Now she is alone, emotionally scarred, and bitter. That is certainly not going to be my life. But I didn't believe this would be where I am at this stage of my life. I suppose a lot of people take detours in their lives. Some more tragic then a divorce by far. I keep reminding myself of that as well. The sky is not falling chicken little, it just feels that way sometimes.

I really don't think I would have made it this far without certain key people in my life. Some who have been instrumental in helping to keep my sanity. They listened to me cry countless times, offered a shoulder, gentle encouragement, and the grounding I needed to keep my feet steady on the path we all know is the right one for me. I know this journey is just beginning for me, it seems I've come so far already, and I'm weary. After this is done, after the life I have been living alone, is put to paper, and I am legally free of the charade I called a marriage, I hope that with time I can sort through all of the lingering anger and hurt.

That is what I am most afraid of, that somehow, things will continue to hurt me, that the bitterness will linger, that happiness is truly elusive and something that I will never have. I have looked for it for all of my life. I cannot say I have ever been truly happy, sure, there have been happy moments in my life, but never a constant state of it. I would hope that life is mostly happy with bumps in the road, not the other way around.

Just like in the movie, I have faith that even though what I thought I wanted was a complete and utter failure, there IS happiness out there for me and I just need to keep walking the path. And, for the first time, I don't feel alone walking it.

I just called to say......God made me do it.

Just when I think I have heard everything, someone surprises me. Today started, just as any other. Cold. I'm bone weary tired of the cold. It has been a long winter, filled with so much pain and hurt, that I cannot wait for spring to come. Spring is renewal. The rain comes, and washes the earth clean. I feel like I need to stand in that rain, let it wash away the layers of misery that have built up over the past few months. I want to feel new again.

Work was work. There are days when a moment or a special bond with a patient makes every other day worth while in my chosen profession. Today, was unequivocally not one of them or so I thought. Today I sat in my little cubical, working on mounds of paperwork that have fallen behind with the caseload. I hate paperwork. My mind wanders, the hours drag out, painfully. The phone rings. I groan. I truly hope, there is a place we go when we die, that has no cellphones or pagers, or text messaging. Just peace.

The phone number was a marketer. Another groan. For the most part, I can not stand marketers for any job. Whether it is pushing a product or a service, even for a service that provides me employment, it annoys me. With a heavy sigh, I answer. Sound happy Julie. A pause, I repeat "hello?". Damn cellphone connections. I start to hang up and I hear her stumble over her hello. Ah. We'll call her Kay. Kay is the lesser of the annoying marketers. She seems kind. She certainly doesn't give me that used car salesman feeling. That ick feeling. I immediately feel awkward. That feeling when you have to tell someone that they have something hanging out of their nose. That moment that defines you as a true friend. To tell or not to tell. 

Kay began with a very shaky hello and a tense 'how are you doing'. Uhm Ok? Kay and I don't know each other well and have had a handful of conversations, that were always work or facility related, we are simply co-workers. I know nothing of her personal life, other then she has a bird she sometimes brings in the car with her to make her rounds. I know. Odd. Anyway, its not my job to judge folks on their choice of pets.

Many uncomfortable short silences later, she finally asks. "Is there something I can do for you?". Confused, I asked her in pertaining to what. She said she didn't exactly know. She informed me that I had been on her mind for several days, she had called me Friday, after hours, and left a rather cryptic message. I ignored it, as I often do, marketers you know. I was somewhat speechless and still trying to figure out exactly what the bloody hell this woman was talking about. 

Then, like a flash of light through pitch black darkness, it dawned on me. She meant personally. She continued on, explaining, that she knew this sounded 'totally crazy and strange', but she felt that God had put me on her mind and that she needed to call me. Hmm. I almost said, "nope, nothing going on", as I'm used to doing. I do not share often, with friends (ok ok unless I have the anonymity of the great world wide web) let alone co-workers. Sharing with co-workers you do not know well, is a recipe for disaster later on when you get unsolicited advice from those same co-workers armed with just enough knowledge of the situation to judge and form opinions and unceremoniously remind you of what an absolute idiot you are for being in whatever crappy situation you are in. Politeness and professionalism usually prevents you from telling them to jump off a cliff, after all, you will be sitting next to them in the next monthly meeting and eating bagels with them.

If you know me personally, you know that I have a great distrust of generally anyone who claims to be a Godly person. My mind flipped through the days recently, the days I was sobbing in my bosses office (also a friend), the times I was venting out loud or any other opportunity she had to get a sense of something was not right in Julie's world. I could not remember her ever being present at any of those times. I reminded myself, she did seem like a kind person, she does have a pet bird and honestly, if you can get close to one of those, you must be almost saintly.

I can honestly say I do not remember most of that conversation, I do know that in retrospect I probably shared a bit too much of my personal life, crossed some professional boundaries, but I suppose it was all something I needed to say or I wouldn't have said it. I honestly do not know what or how that whole conversation occurred, what inspired her to call, if it was truly in fact God as she said, or if it was one human passing another in a hallway and realizing, that other person was suffering. I don't know. I do know that I appreciated whatever power or non-power prodded her into calling me. I hung up, and miraculously, I felt...better.

In like a lion, out like a lamb (hopefully).

March has arrived, cold, gray, the grass brown from the months of cold, some still covered with dirty snow. Everything seems wet and cold, lifeless. It is hard to imagine that in 8 short days, a chapter in my life, a very long, turbulent, frequently unhappy chapter will be closing. Some would say that with the closing of that chapter, happiness would surely follow, allowed to now grow. In time, I am sure it will, perhaps sooner then I realize. 

Yet, I can't help but feel the sorrow that makes my throat tighten, that brings the sting of tears to my eyes. The memories of this very poignant chapter flood over me. Sometimes, in the fresh pain, breathing becomes difficult, the tightness in my chest overwhelms me, and yes, in the dark, alone with my thoughts, those tears fall one after another until the pillow is soaked. I find it significant that they are always silent tears. I told myself, they should be, my sleeping angel is next to me. Above all else, I do not wish to cause her more pain then her little heart can stand to bear right now. But, I believe there is more to silent tears then just that. I have been silent for so very long. My emotions silent, my anger silent, my resentment while eating away at me, was too silent. My life has been silent, void of emotion for so long. It's become who I am. I have become a master at walling off those unsavory emotions. I keep them to myself and only acknowledge them in the dark.

Days have passed into one another, silence with them. Deafening silence. The joy has been lost in this house. The walls extend here from our hearts, quiet, cold, emotionless. A shell remains. Laughter has disappeared. We move amongst each other, quietly, floating on tip toes, dreading a disturbance, a disagreement, the inevitable anger that overflows here. It is stifling. The dreams once held in this home are shadows of the past, no longer in this world, but remain somewhere in our memories, so many painful memories.

We have become a segregated family. Haley our sun, we the planets that revolve around her brightness, basking in the glow from her, fearing that even in such a bright star, the light will dim and we would have no one to blame, but ourselves. I hold on to that light, desperately clinging to the last part of who we were, and who we wanted to be. It is all that is left.

There are times that I am in disbelief as to the course our lives have taken. How did something go so wrong. Shock has been a constant in this spiral downward. Sometimes, I wonder if it is a justified emotion. I try to remember when things were different and I can't. I remember me as different. That is a hard realization to come to. That all of this, everything, has been the same all these years. I wasted so much of my life, dreaming dreams, alone. They were truly my dreams. As I have come to also realize they were not shared. So many questions. I consider myself a person that is aware, that knew where her life was going, and who would share that life with her. I struggle greatly with the possibility that all of this time I fooled myself into thinking I shared a life with someone. Life, is not meant to be experienced alone, nor is it meant to be to be made up into a world of make believe, and it is definitely not meant to have your partner drug behind you kicking and screaming. I have obviously done it all.

Birth

From the moment we are born, life is at times harsh, cold, every breath hurts, every tear is like liquid fire from your eyes and you in the midst of all that pain you long for the warm embrace, the shelter, the protection of those who hold unconditional love for you. Sometimes, that person is your mother, your father, adoptive parents, relatives, grandparents, or friends and sometimes, you are so very lucky to find that in a partner. Regardless, there is someone, somewhere, who no matter how hurtful you have been, how angry, how much you fought against their ideals, their principles, even their unconditional love, it remained.

At some point in your life, you will be made aware that not all love is unconditional. There will be lines crossed, feelings destroyed, emotions hid, mistakes never made right and that person, whom you so believed held such unconditional love for you, fades. Fading is somewhat misleading. To fade is to slip away, like a mist, a shadow, something translucent and painless. Sometimes, I believe most times, the fading is gradual. While gradual, it is never less painful, or damaging to the outside world, it seems to be the natural course of things. A person, tragically enough, becomes accustomed to this fading. She finds herself dealing with the cards that were dealt, internalizing each painful moment as the color of the threads that held her to this one person, began to pale. Strand by strand the ties, the pieces of one another that bound them to each other, turn gray and weakened under the constant strain and hurt and yes, even anger.

The years passed. The colors of their life continue to dull, there are moments of great joy, those bursts of sunshine that mask all of the pain, loneliness, and guilt. A child was born. She became her mother's sole reason for breathing. She became my reason for living. Had she never been born, I wonder how my life would have been different. Would I be sitting here, a few days shy of my 35th birthday, writing about her birth. A beginning that made every ending in my life worthwhile just to make it to that point. 

The hope remained, that with enough time, enough encouragement, those strands of our lives would come back into focus, the color would bleed back into them and once again we would be whole. 

Unfortunately, not all dreams are realized, sometimes wishing for your heart's desire is truly hopeless. Those fibers, those once strong bonds that held them together, broke.

I wish I could say that I was innocent in this ending. Perhaps, had I not waited for change to come, but sought it out, confronted it without anger, without resentment, without utter desperation that the years had brought, things might have been different. WE might have avoided this ending.

Too much time has passed. Too much pain has filled every corner of our hearts, too much anger and bitterness slip from our tongues, and somehow, the ones we used protect, we now hurt and ravage with cruelty. 

As I have said, I have not been innocent in this. I have learned many things. That things are not always black and white, love is not as simple as they portray it to be in the movies, and when you feel that you are your lowest point, that there is possibly not one person left in this world that could lift you up, change everything, ease the pain, calm the chaos, and somehow turn your life right side up.....he walks into your life.

More to come tomorrow....time to go snuggle and wrap my arms around my little one and hopefully dream good dreams.