Life Is Beautiful, Truly, It Is

 Life, the greatest teacher, teaches well, and therefore, like a teacher, it will grade you on your effort. However, to add to the beauty of the school of life is to know we are given so many chances.

In 2013, I enrolled in a course, one intended to last a lifetime. I was about to begin my season of learning and growing as someone’s life partner. It was a dream of mine as a young girl to be married; however, as I grew older, I became indifferent about that dream, though, I still very much wanted to be with someone; to be a woman whom a man loved, and a woman who loved and cared for her man.

After meeting my former husband in October 2012, I left my home country in the Caribbean to move to the United States to be with him in February 2013. I didn’t imagine progressing so quickly, and I most certainly wasn’t ready to give up my life on the island. He convinced me that it was the best decision for the plans he had for us, marriage. Included in that convincing was an important surgery he needed for which he wanted me by his side nursing him back to health. A surgery which I later found out was never planned, nor urgently needed, and has never happened, till this day.

All the signs ignored, I said a tough goodbye to my family and friends, and off I went to begin my new life. We warmed the love nest for the first few weeks; he continued to charm me, showed me his life and welcomed me into his circle. At the time, I felt like I could have stayed by his side forever. Unfortunately, the bell rings between lessons, signaling that the next one is about to begin, a change of course, for us, it was a change “off course”.

As the short weeks turned into 2-3 months, our dynamics shifted, he reminded me of his impatience and manipulation.

One event after another, one outburst following the last felt like we were on a rollercoaster ride which he would get off from while I still sat wondering what had just happened, and before I could get my bearings right, he was on again for another ride maneuvering us through rainy and sunny days.

For a really long time, I strived for an A+  on my tests with him, but I always fell short. I could never do anything right from taking care of the home, to my appearance, to our intimacy nor future plans. He isolated me from old friends, and new ones, introducing me to wives of other friends, and acquaintances and when he realized that I would begin my own friendships with them, he would criticize and make negative, hurtful remarks to undermine that budding friendship.

This was his isolation tactic; to not have anyone to tell our secrets to, nor be able to rely on if I needed.

Within months of becoming his wife, I was lost with a voice I no longer recognized, without a personality, color, light in what felt like a never-ending cycle of pain; it engulfed me.

Summer of 2013 welcomed us with him reporting to work in beautiful San Diego, CA but life was only bleakly beautiful. I would watch and listen to the vehicles on the freeway near our home, and wonder where others were going. Were they escaping realities like mine? Did they spend mornings watching out their kitchen window with heavy eyes wondering when this season would end, or even how it would end?

Over time, an anger and hatred towards me grew which I thought I could love him harder through.

Silent treatments were his luxury of purchase to negate resolving marital problems, or the lack thereof; he would always remind me of the simple fact that the natural human I was, was his biggest problem. I wasn’t worth the conversation.

Why can’t I pack up and return home my parents would plead with me. I didn’t want to return home; I was too far gone, ashamed, embarrassed, feeling like a failure.

The mounting tension came to a culmination after a very frightening night of torment; physical abuse, emotional abuse, a terrifying call to my mother to tell her if she didn’t hear from me, he had taken my life and who to call.

Unfortunately, I burdened my mom with my own pain, then I burdened my closet friend I had made so far with inadvertently pleading for help to save my marriage or me.

That night ended with me in the hospital and him getting arrested. I was in a daze following my discharge, a mental daze of confusion, but as soon as the phone rang, guilt held me by the throat as he had once did; my husband was calling me from the jail to bail him out. I went off to what I excused my actions as wifely duties, I went to bail him out. I asked what was next for us; he stated that he would do couples counseling with me. By this time, I had already been in therapy for 10 months; we went home, but did not live happily ever after.

His lawyer prepared his defense, and won.

Therapy worked for a while; it helped keep the darkness at bay. It is difficult to keep mental illness at bay when the hurting party does not wish to seek help for their pain and causes more damage to the people in their life. The difficult days came and went, we moved and settled; the settling wasn’t for me, I was constantly walking on egg shells and walked on them for 5 more years following the 2014 incident.

While I was in this wilderness, I was building wings I never could have built without this dry land where I begged and pleaded and searched for God. He found me, he held me, and he strengthened me.

There were days when I would search endlessly for a women’s shelter, for a resource, for somewhere to hide away, but found none. Garage doors opening still haunt me; a reminder that this pain is now buried so deep it has seeped into other unconscious areas of my life. Only this time, I don’t tremble and fall apart thinking that he is home and what trouble would now befall me, now I smile, empowered.

During a therapy session in 2019, he said he was done, and he walked out. This was the end to our efforts; back and forth in therapy, two temporary separations. I was exhausted and matching his energy; if he cursed me, I would curse back. If he laid his hands on me, I would hit back. I was consumed with anger, not for him at first but for the disappointment that had become our marriage, and the pain that he would never see me as worth it enough to not hurt me. I still hoped that he wanted to keep trying, fortunately, my hope was only one-sided. I would hear him on the phone telling his friends that he wasted his time with someone mediocre amongst other things. Within the safety of the bathroom walls, muffled by the running shower, my own therapy continued, there I cried out, there I healed what I could.

We filed for divorce in December 2019.

Without knowing it, I had already begun to heal while still being married, healing the things I could still see and feel without thinking of how to fully process my 7-year old wounds. I didn’t think I could open them back up again, it would hurt and I was so much stronger now-I told myself.

There are still days I hurt, it’s a pain that’s a reminder, a scar that 4 years later when I say 2024 has been my best year yet in life, I know it was earned.

My anger has subsided, and forgiveness has replaced it. It was necessary to forgive myself for staying so long, and my ex-husband for how he showed up. Should I have held onto this anger, it would be like poison dripping in my soul destroying the beauty of what I was now building. It wasn’t easy to get there. I faced the questions of could I have tried harder. Could I have been a better wife were once like loud taunting companions in a dark room.

Now, when I walk the hallway of my life, my head is held high, my heart is honest. Carried in my backpack is so much gratitude to have been chosen for this journey, and my lessons of self-discovery, resilience, adaptation, boundaries and self-worth, independence, healing, recovery, compassion and empathy and a redefinition of love and success.

Life is beautiful, do you know that?

It has a way of rewarding sustained effort by opening new doors, creating safe transitions and offering lessons that will shape the next phase of our journey.

This light beyond your pain is worth you reaching for it, dreaming of it and walking towards it.

Years from now, I pray you don’t remember it as if it were yesterday, but I pray you think of it fondly with an answer to an important question, what did you learn?

You have the strength in you, and the strength someone else will need to summit their own mountain. So when that bell rings know that a new lesson will be taught, one of your strength, your resilience, your healing, and restoration.

A sweet-sounding bell has rung for my next lesson, my next season of life, off I go.

Shanel

SoothingH.E.R Podcast