Tears have dried. The children are asleep and I’m sitting in the dark crying again. That’s how it began. my awakening and awareness that something was very wrong in my marriage. I was getting up every day wondering how it had all gone so wrong. I was approaching an awareness that was about to end in a decision that would leave me feeling broken. Divorce! Thirty years of my life was ending. Denial! Maybe it doesn’t have to really be over. I’ll wake up tomorrow and he’ll be nice again. Maybe, like the last time he smiled and laughed with me, but when was that last time… when did I laugh last? Damn I’m crying again.

For years I blamed myself. I wasn’t as slim as I use to be. Boring, maybe I was just so boring, and I could have done more to be better. Damn I’m crying again. Maybe it really was my fault. I made so much of him slapping me when I was pregnant, and he was really sorry and scared. Was that the beginning? He said it was my fault I wasn’t good enough. Not as a mother or lover. He walked away and I’m crying again. I looked at myself in the mirror just to see if I was still there. Yeah, I was there looking older, sadder, but there somewhere if I could only find me in the reflection.

Anger I’m so mad! But I just worked harder, working fulfilled me. But then I’d go home and face his indifference and my anger. Anger allowed me to hide my more hurtful emotions. My rational mind objected to my anger it craved the pain and guilt. Wanted to punish him! Let him cry and be sorry! Damn, I’m crying again! I thought I’d changed. That making a decision would make a difference. I hadn’t told him yet I hadn’t changed; not really. I’d given up my personal power. I’d stopped fighting for my personal space and accepted the anger embracing it like a protective cover; inner rage. I became a victim and made my children casualties of the angry battle with myself. Bargaining was my path to change. My rebirth or metamorphosis finding my way back to being me.

I felt helpless still crying when I thought nobody was around. Pleading with myself to take control, begging me to become a better me. My children needed me to find the strength of make myself over…find that better me! Then came that day I knew I’d reached my resolve. I’d decided to survive! I was standing in my living room thinking how I had everybody fooled. Looking at my modest home with two children, two cars, and a dog! Living the dream of a successful family. If I left him if I divorced him…everybody would know I was a failure. Depression is painful. The more depressed I became the more I felt like hiding. I just knew everybody could see me; how broken I really was. So why keep fighting and for what? It nearly broke me when I heard one of my children telling a friend, “she lays on the couch everyday and cries.” I say nearly broke me because hearing that got me off that couch!

Divorce had taken me through the stages of grief. Grief isn’t just about death in the natural sense, but it is an ending. Acceptance opens you to a new beginning that can be a better something! Divorce had made me feel like a failure but acceptance allowed for a rebirth. I survived the pain, hurt and the trauma and fear of a future that wouldn’t look like the past thirty years. A life time, a new life. I arise each day now to a new day. Challenging myself to enjoy being me and that I’m good enough complete in my self-worth of being me. A new better me, not perfect but better. Sometimes alone but not lonely.

I didn’t just endure. I survived into a better me and I like her!

PCC

When I started Alimonia Life I was unsure of the direction, I just knew that I wanted to
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