Still Learning (18)

Even as I started feeling better, I would have down times. I struggled with the pain and anger, then depression and anxiety. What a roller coaster our emotions can be and I hate roller coasters. I am proud to say I kept fighting through those dark days. I had to. What is the alternative? After all I am my mother’s daughter – a McDonald girl – and that’s what we do.

I had to get my power back that was lost so long ago. I had to realize my emotions were fickle. I’m not worthless, undesirable, ugly. I had to learn to like myself again. My life is worth something. It takes two to make a relationship and one to leave it. I can’t get upset at things I can’t control. It wasn’t my fault I was cheated on. That’s what he did, not something I made him do. If he wanted someone else that is his loss because he can’t have me and do that. I’m going to respect myself.

As I examine the stages of recovery I see that I am still going through the final ones. I’ve passed through Shock, Denial, Protest, Bargaining, Dispair, Identification, Improvement but I haven’t reached the feelings of Success and Happiness. As I read the list again, they resemble the stages of grief after going through a death. Divorce is a death of a relationship and the longer you are married, the longer the grief. Being married 30+ years I am still processing it all after two years. I am not as deep in the canyon when it first happened but I am not completely out either.

I can look back and realize what I was attached to was not my ex but what he gave me. The need to live and survive is bigger than the person I thought I needed. The marriage was gone a long time ago and we had become ghosts to one another. Now was the time for me to put together a life and find meaning. The love lost had a purpose - for me it was to find my best self. When it all comes apart and you can’t stand it, know that it must end. The pain is worth it and the sun will shine once more. I had given up my true self to have him and I never really had him at all.

The worst power stealer is the internalization of the belief that I must be loved by someone. But I am human and want companionship, love, intimacy, maybe be married again. Now that the pain is better and I am in my own mind I can determine what I want and what I don’t out of a relationship. My counselor says that all relationships are “growth relationships”. Okay, I have grown from the first one (whether I wanted to or not) and am ready to try another. But I am 30 years older and the world of dating has really changed.

The fear of trying to find another relationship made me stay in one much longer than I should have. I don’t want to make the same mistakes. I always felt I was begging him to love me and that killed both of our spirits. He couldn’t love me enough and I didn’t accept what he could give. I was trying to fill a hole inside that was never going to be filled. I have to fill it with loving myself first. I know now that no man owes me love. It is not in my control and can’t make a man love me. I am not defined by who loves me, I am defined by what I do and choose to love. I have to stop telling myself no one would ever love me. So what if I don’t find a man to love me. I will have to be okay with that. I may not like it but that doesn’t keep me from dating and having “growth relationships”.

I don’t know what is down the road and in my future. I like to believe that I was not meant to be alone forever. But I am not a psychic so I have to live every day, keep moving forward, look for opportunities for new people in my life and survive. That is the only way to get to the Thriving part of my journey.



Heal the past, Live the present, Dream the future.