Tag Archives: Healing

Valentine’s Day – One of the Most Dreaded Holidays of My New Year

Posted on by Standard 21

To be honest, I’ve kind of been dreading this day. Turns out, I forgot it was Valentine’s Day for about the first half of it.

Then, I was so busy doing other stuff, I didn’t really care. But now, I’m sitting here, and I’m no longer trying to ignore the obvious. I’m single this Valentine’s Day.

I also don’t seem to care today! Yay!

I’ll say one thing about this roller-coaster moodiness I’ve been experiencing, sometimes the “Whatever” mood hits just perfectly and my whole week is saved!

I read this quote from C.S.Lewis awhile back, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.

Yes!!!

Yes!!!

If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” C.S. Lewis

 

Becoming bitter, angry, guarded is really the easy way out. I don’t want to miss out on all the really cool things about loving someone with your whole heart, just so I can miss what bad things may possibly happen.

In short, I’m no coward.  :-)

Happy Valentine’s Day!!! Frankly, it wasn’t that bad!!

Love,

Bird

Dancing In Our Nightmares

Posted on by Standard 32

Ok.

First, before I sound like a goofball, I just want to go on the record as saying that I almost never watch Dr. Phil. Don’t get me wrong. I think he has a lot of wisdom, but I rarely find myself in the mood to hear about how bad other people’s lives are….except when my own is castleflailing so badly there is nowhere to go but up. In an unfamiliar act, I set my DVR to record one of his past episodes a few weeks ago. The only word I remembered from the advertisement was “Dealbreakers” and I thought about my whole relationship with Chef this last year, and the word stuck with me. It’s just been fraught with dealbreakers lately.

Then, in a more normal display of rebellion, I ignored the recording for weeks. I don’t know why I find myself afraid to hear some things, but something in me told me I wasn’t going to like hearing this. I couldn’t have been more wrong, or more right.

The truth is, had I watched this episode a few weeks ago, it would have only made me feel worse about myself, but lately, I’ve been able to adjust to how I fit in my new world, and while I feel still a bit unsure of myself, I have to say I’m feeling much more adult than I ever have before.

One of the guests on the show was the young wife of a man caught in a sting trying to have sex with a 13 year-old girl. Now, I’d like to think that had Chef walked over that line, I’d have kicked his nasty butt to the curb, but these days, I find myself less sure of what I will and will not tolerate. I’m not so quick to decide I’d do anything. I’ve already compromised more than I said I ever would.

And so, I could really empathize with this poor wife who hated what her husband had done, yet still loved her husband and was so broken and confused by what he seemed to find lacking in her. As I watched her cry and struggle to answer questions about reactions in herself that she simply did not understand, I got it. I just understood. Sometimes, we are appalled at our own reactions. I knew that I could get over Chef using drugs, and even the porn, with a little help. I was even pretty sure I could get over the affair, given the proper amount of remorse and regret, along with love and kindness. And in an enormous amount of humiliating lack of self-respect, I figured I could get over my husband moving the girl into my home, giving her love letters that basically said the same things he used to write to me, and letting her hang up her clothes in my half of our closet, lay her head on the pillows I used to sleep on, and even use the clothes I hadn’t taken with me, not to mention what she does sexually with my husband. Yes. I thought I could get over all of this.

The problem for me is that I never really had a list of dealbreakers in my own mind. As Christians, I do believe we should go above and beyond to make our marriages work. But the Bible says to let an unbelieving spouse go his own way, too, and that is where I got stuck. I didn’t want to believe that Chef had tricked me for all of those years. I wanted to believe in this fantasy I had created in my own mind of just who and what Chef was all about, and he just couldn’t live up to that dream. I think the man he was is worthy of the grieving I did for him, but the man he is now doesn’t want to be a Christian man, and I have to leave him to it, then. A marriage won’t work if both people are struggling towards different goals.

Which leads me to another realization I came to. And this one is a bit harder to admit. Because of my age when the predator starting molesting me, I have spent most of my life in a “child-like” bubble. Most of my reactions to big emotions seem to be those of a teen-age girl, which explains why I’ve avoided them completely when possible. My relationships have always looked more fatherly/daughterly than two equal partners and it wasn’t until I started to refuse to allow Chef to order me to do things I just didn’t want to do that we started to really have problems.

There have been an alarming number of compromises I’ve made in order to keep my husband happy, and it is with a lot of shame I admit that. It seems to me that God did actually answer my prayers when I begged Him to rescue me and Chef out of this drug-induced, porn-tainted hell I found myself in. I just figured He would magically make Chef suddenly well. I didn’t realize God, instead, started my healing first.

Ask any of the many people who knew me growing up and you’ll probably get the same story. I was an obedient, respectful child. And even though I was being molested, my reactions to authority were not a farce. I obeyed without question. And that is the kind of wife I was too.

Over the last few years, though, God was bringing that sexual dysfunction and emotional retardation to surface and we had been dealing with it, piece by piece. And as I was able to address and unravel some of that shame, guilt, and rage, I was healing. And as I was healing, I wasn’t so quick to allow Chef to bully me into doing things I just felt were wrong. I don’t know how this looked from his side, but I’m guessing he probably didn’t understand this spineless girl growing the huevos to say no to him. And if we’re going to be fair here, it wasn’t what he had signed up for.

It’s kind of scary what doors can be opened in your own mind just hearing and seeing a similar situation for another person, but I have to say I’m glad these doors are open now. I don’t think Chef’s needing to replace me with T says anything bad about me anymore, nor do I feel that overwhelming, erratic urge to win him back just to prove there never had been anything wrong with me in the first place. The prize would not be worth the pain I’d continue to be living in. There have been way too many dealbreakers for me to even consider it. And as an adult woman, I’m clearly placing a line in the sand about what I will and will not tolerate from someone I love and trust. No more fairy tales and grieving for something that, in the light of day, was unhealthy from the very start. And I don’t say it was unhealthy because of Chef. It was unhealthy because I was a broken, unhealthy little girl when I set out down this path.

I’m not mad at Chef anymore for all of his meth-linked mistakes. He’s a broken person just like me, and he hasn’t found his way to his Healer yet. But I’m thanking God tonight for a little clarity and for allowing me to begin seeing Chef and T from a different viewpoint that isn’t so cynical, hurt, and angry. We are all just a lot of people who are broken, radiating towards other broken people, replicating a horrible dance that feels familiar to us. Abused people find people who abuse them to dance with. Addicts find other addicts to dance with. We all rebuild the nightmares of our childhoods, and live in those frail castles until God plucks us out and renews our hearts and our minds.

I just left the stupid dance early, and Chef got another partner that still knows the steps. I’m sorry, Chef and T. I’m learning the steps to a new dance now.

– Bird

Related articles

Bird Goes On Vacation

Posted on by Standard 23

Like probably all the other bloggers in the world, I intend to write a year round-up piece

Bird and Vic - Working on our Blogs

Bird and Vic – Working on our Blogs

tomorrow. It’s probably going to be my masterpiece because let’s face it — This year was packed full of drama for me. Luckily, I’m finally able to find some things to laugh about despite the upheaval my life experienced. It would have really blown if the year had ended in October, right?

One of the things that is helping me end the year on a better note is that I got to take a vacation this week to Colorado. In a move that is completely unlike me, I decided to take up a fellow blogger’s invitation to come visit her in her home. I have a lot of friends I’ve developed through blogging, and I am blessed by invitations to visit occasionally. Up until now, I’ve politely declined because in all honesty, I’ve been kind of a bummer the last few months. And when you meet someone face to face for the first time, you want to not be puffy-eyed, with snot rolling out of your nose down your face, and unable to talk about anything other than the cheater husband who broke your heart. Bursting into tears at random, weird moments tends to make even die-hard, long-term friends uncomfortable; new friends would probably never call you again. It just wasn’t the first impression I wanted to make.

But, one of my friends, Victoria, who writes at Victoriasvisits, has been following my blog almost from the beginning, and due to some stuff we both were going through, we became friends through our blogs, then, email, and thanks to my vodka periods, drunk dialing. Even after that embarrassing phone call, Vic continued to be my friend (proving to me that she isn’t that easy to scare off), and when she invited me to get out of Tulsa for a few days, I threw caution to the wind, and agreed. I was nervous, as I don’t usually take vacations, and I have never taken one to visit someone I hadn’t met in person, but that alone should tell you just how miserable the holidays have felt for me. After assuring my children repeatedly that I was positive this wasn’t going to be a re-enactment of “Misery”, I got in touch with my sister-in-law to see if I could stop in and see my brother and his family, and wouldn’t you know it! They lived three miles away from Vic on the same road! After getting promises from A (my sister-in-law) that should I need help escaping a hobbling situation, they would save me, I borrowed a suitcase, and headed to the mountains of Colorado.

I haven’t flown on a plane in a lot of years, and while I’ve heard the horror stories about the airplanesecurity hassles, I’ve never experienced them. Luckily, I had no issues at all. The one thing that happened on the way that was blog-worthy was that the airline I flew on, Southwest, was completely full with not one seat empty. The plane had two bathrooms…one at the front and one at the back. And the lines for the bathroom at the back was pretty overwhelming, thanks to the stewardesses enthusiastic delivery of beverages to the passengers. What was worse is that the stewardesses made people return to their seats because evidently it is against some policy to stand in line at the door of a plane restroom while in the air. Their suggestion was to wait in your seat until you see someone come out and then sprint back there for your turn. Does anyone else see a problem with this? First of all, any person sitting in a center seat or a window seat is going to have to squeeze past two other people and then run to beat any of the  aisle seat people who have a much easier time actually seeing the person exit the bathroom, as well as racing unencumbered down the aisle to have their turn. Basically, the people sitting on the aisle had a very clear advantage, and there wasn’t much honor to be found when people need to urinate. No one really knew if anyone else had been eyeing the restroom, so there were numerous “meet-ups” at the bathroom door. Finally, some of them smartened up and sat in the stewardesses’ seats at the back to wait in line clandestinely. I was one of those … :-) .

I was met at the airport by Vic, and she looked and acted just the way I had imagined, so it was like seeing an old friend, and any anxiety I might have had lingering was quickly extinguished. While I’m appreciative for every single thing Vic did for me, there are a few I

Do you think Chef's ears were burning? That might have explained his really, really bad mood at the airport.

Do you think Chef’s ears were burning? That might have explained his really, really bad mood at the airport.

really want to say thank you for. First, Vic listened to me as I mourned my marriage. I happen to be there when Chef’s birthday came and went, and she counseled me, wiped my tears, shared some of her stories and tears with me, and was an all-around good friend. The second thing is that she introduced me to some stuff I never thought I’d ever try. First, right from the airport we went to a nail place so we could get pedicures. I declined. I don’t want people touching my feet, and I remained firm on this, but I did get my nails done, and my eyebrows waxed. So, after my long plane trip, I looked like death-warmed-over but my eyebrows were fantastic and my nails were shiny. :-) The second thing is that she took me to a dance lesson. Vic is a lovely, artistic person, and she dances like an angel. She obviously has faith that anyone can learn to dance like that, and though I insisted that I dance like Seinfeld’s Elaine-Dry-Heave, she made me go anyways. And guess what! I didn’t do as badly as I thought I would. The teacher taught me to fox-trot, and other than stepping on his feet (which I insisted were unusually large and were invading my private space) a few times, I wasn’t hopelessly bad. It gave me a tiny bit of hope that with some patience, maybe some dance teacher out there could teach me enough that one day I can go dancing! And last but definitely not least, I got my very first massage. Besides the obvious heaven that is a massage, I had a cool conversation with the woman giving it to me. Turns out her husband did the exact same thing to her that Chef did to me, leaving

klondike bar

her for a younger woman. This had all happened to her about 5 years prior to my massage date, and she talked to me about how she made it through the heartbreak, discovered herself, and now felt that it was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She said her wandering ex eventually tried to return to her a year after breaking her heart, but by that time, she’d created a happy life for herself, and there was no place in it for him. It was a hopeful story, and I was amazed at how many stories I heard like this from different people I met while in Colorado.

Saturday, I got to visit with my brother M and his wife A. A made a huge impact on me, too, because she is a no-nonsense, very practical, blunt woman…(much like I had thought I was before my life came crashing down)…and she was very straight-forward about how my situation looked from the outside. She brought up the phrase “deal-breakers” a lot, and she is right. There should be things that are just unacceptable to me, and some things just can’t be excused. She was appalled at what Chef and T did when I left my home, and the fact that I occasionally still cook for them, take them food, and give them money about made her head explode. I was given a good perspective on what the reality of all of this was, and my brother M advised me to take this time to just get to know who I am without any titles. He’s right that I’ve always been something to someone else, and I’ve never been alone. Plus, he did say that they had never really cared much for Chef, and them thinking I could do better was a nice little compliment to me. It was a good visit. I got to see my niece and nephews almost all grown up…(that happens when you consistently feed kids)…and then I headed back to Vic’s.

vacationMy last night there, I cooked some steaks for Vic and a friend she invited over named S, whose husband left her after 29 years of marriage for another woman. We got to commiserate for hours, sharing grieving stories, moments of strength in the Lord, moments of utter failure, and general snarky opinions of men who dump their families for other women. It was very therapeutic, and it reaffirmed my opinion that no matter how bad your story may be, someone else went through something worse.

Last night, because of A’s advice and Vic and S counseling, I took back some money I had sent to Chef, ensuring that he’d probably slit my tires before I returned. But I felt good telling him that the hand-outs were over. He’d made his choices, and he needed to make them work for himself, without manipulating me into helping him. Needless to say, he was pretty furious with me, but he did show up at the airport. Trust me. I wasn’t really sure he would.

My kids were ecstatic to see me, my apartment didn’t burn to the ground in my absence,  and   my cats were fed and alive. So, I’m going to have to say that this was one very successful, awesome vacation. Thank you, Victoria!! I love you!!

– Bird

One Map With The Directions Through Hell

Posted on by Standard 14

Ok.

So, now that my life has a routine, and I’ve pretty much said about all I can possibly say about the last crappy year, crappy drugs,

lol...It was through the destruction of one that I really SHINED!!

lol…It was through the destruction of one that I really SHINED!!

crappy marriage, and exposed my heartbreak for months on this blog, to the point of even losing some followers, I’m finding it harder to come up with things to write about. I’m happy and sad about this. Sad,  because I love to write on this blog, but I don’t know what to say now that I’m healing up nicely. The up side though, is that I’m happy, and while I’ll get a pang here or there, I’ve gotten more control over what I will actually allow myself to dwell on. I don’t kid myself into thinking it’ll be smooth sailing here on out, but the storms don’t take my breath away anymore. I re-blogged my letter to Chef so I could add it to my blog. I actually told the guy that I wanted to remain anonymous, but he might have misunderstood…lol. Still, when I re-read the letter, I knew I wanted it on my blog as part of the record of this whole painful process. So, no. I’m not feeling sad and nostalgic. I’m feeling like I want my writings all in this one place.

One of my friends on here, Paula,  encouraged me to re-read an old post I wrote when I was in the thick of the pain, and I have to admit, that was a hard read. It’s even hard to re-read my words prior to my soul-baring posts. I knew what was going on in my home even if I wasn’t writing about it. I have to admit there are a lot of things I’ve written on this blog that I may never read again. Maybe eventually I’ll go to the beginning and read them, but for now, I’m liking the peaceful feeling I have. The healing is going fine, but I’m not ready to walk through those corridors of my mind right now. I literally was an emotional mess.

One thing that I am thankful for though, is that I kept this kind of on-line journal through the worst part of it. I am so glad that time tends to soften the memories that tear us apart; often, it even allows us to forget some of them all together. How would anyone ever heal from anything if the memories stayed fresh and powerful? We need that forgetfulness to heal.

However, there is also a down-side to being able to forget, and I’m absolutely gifted at blocking out (eventually) what I don’t want to remember. I now know a lot more about who I am as an individual, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve actually achieved some kind of change for the better. I’m obviously a codependent person. I’m a control freak. I’m attracted to people who aren’t good for me. Well, I say that, but I’ve been married twice, and I don’t really know for sure I actually have a “type” of guy. I’ve spent my whole adult life married, so there isn’t a large amount of data for me to collect from, if you get my drift. But, I have learned to pay more attention, and spend less time excusing, what the people I love do. I wasn’t helping…I was hurting. I’ve learned that even when I didn’t even want to live anymore, I never gave up on God. I may be an appalling Christian, but I remained one. :-)

I will eventually re-read a lot of the painful posts because I don’t want these lessons to sink comfortably to the back of my mind. I don’t want to repeat history. I would like to learn these lessons once and for all so that there is no need for it to be addressed in my life again.

Most of all, someday I will be completely healed and over all of this mess, and I want to see the differences in how I thought before all of this, and my perspective after it was finally over and done with.

Hopefully, I’ve made at least one person out there not feel like the only person on earth going through hell. I received a lot of encouragement, peace, chastising, and prayers from people I’ve never even met. I think God was just saving my life when He planted the idea in my head that a blog would be fun. It really was a rather random thing for me to just decide to do.

Yet, it turned out to be crucial to this whole journey. So, thank you all, even the ones that dropped me when I couldn’t laugh for a while. I learned way more from you guys than you will ever know. And now I have this kind of map that I can look back on that shows how I navigated a hellish part of my life. Hopefully, I’ll never have to take this route again…ever. :-)

Love you,

Bird

 

 

Related articles

 

My Pictorial Summary of the Last Year of My Marriage

Posted on by Standard 30

I don’t know about you guys, but I love pictorial stories. And thank the Lord, the internet is just swimming with the perfect pictures, quotes, and general information needed to put together a fantastic pictorial story. So, since my day started off like garbage, I’ve decided to write a pictorial of the last year of my life that makes me feel better. This, added to all the encouragement and general outpouring of kindness you have all showed me, has helped me end on a more positive, happier note. You guys are the greatest!!

On October 16, 2011, Chef decided he was old and needed to launch into a midlife crisis to make himself feel better:

It only took me one whole year to decide that I was finished being shook up.

Because he always does things in a really big way, he chose the absolute worst drug on the face of the earth to play around with and lost his mind:

But it looked like so much fun!!! Trust me. It isn’t.

And who could have guessed that inserting Drano, Lithium, and who knows what else into his brain would make him insane? Well, I could. I’d seen it before with my first husband. But I was in love, and I just knew I could save him. How many people on this earth have thought that exact same thing?

Unless you become a meth addict. Then, I don’t want you anymore. Your flaw almost killed me.

For months, I tried to deal with his problem without any help. I didn’t tell anyone…our kids, families, friends…no one. I didn’t want to embarrass him. I thought I could fix it by myself, even without his help.

Everybody stand back! I got this!!

It was ridiculous now that I think about it. I used to think I was pretty smart. You sure couldn’t tell by this whole fiasco!

I mock no one anymore. I’m living in a glass house.

As the drug took over, my life turned into this strange roller-coaster of secrets, PTSD, lies, pain, and addiction. It was horrible. What was worse is that because of the nature of the problem, I felt like I had to keep his secrets, too, and I hate secrets. I seriously HATE them.

He had locks on all kinds of stuff. He had lots of secrets, I guess.

The up side of it was I gained some interesting skills that ensure me a place as a low level mob known associate. Either that or I can become one heck of a stalker. I can pick locks, break passwords, use an adapter to see what websites he’s been looking at, clean out viruses downloaded by porn, and run off bikers from the front porch with a shotgun. I’m flush with new skills!!

My favorite was busting his passwords and changing them to things he’d never guess. I know. But I had to have some fun somewhere.

Finally, I figured it all out, and it turned out he was being unfaithful. It was a kick in the gut, but I seriously already knew that was what he was doing anyways. I just wanted some proof. As things fell even more apart, I finally turned to my family and friends for help. Every single person thought I should leave, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want to believe he would pick a drug over me and the kids. But he was too far gone by that time, and I should have given up. I mean, he was doing bizarre things.

How crazy am I for trying to reason with this?!

He is always surprised at the level of hostility I have about him cheating on me. Seriously. What did he think I’d think?

Finally, after a seriously dangerous incident, I finally put distance between us, but I was a basket case. I couldn’t believe all of this was happening.

My pain and sadness was understandable, but I felt pathetic. I knew he had done things to me that other people would never have tolerated, and yet I couldn’t quit excusing him. I still excuse his bad behavior. I think that makes me somewhat pathetic.

Even though I am a Christian, there were times that I lashed out, wanting him to hurt like he had hurt me. I’m ashamed of that, but it is what I did.

This is pretty close to the terminology I used….

Finally, days started coming and going without the tears. I was able to not think about him, or my whole life, for an hour here or there.

Ahhh. I’d love a little amnesia right about now. :-)

I still harbored some hopes that one day I’d get a chance to talk to him about all of this hellish behaviors that cost us both so much, but he doesn’t want to address any of it with me. However, he’s still pretty upset that I wouldn’t move back in with him when his girlfriend dumped him and turned off his utilities.

Wow. This is him in a nutshell.

Now, even though I live in a new apartment, love my job, have my kids, friends — both online and in real life — I seem to not be able to shake that last little bit of codependency that strives to make me as nuts as he is. I wrote him off forever, and within 24 hours, I’d answered his phone call again. I felt low, low, low.

Wretched Addictions  Why couldn’t we have shared the same one? Oh, that’s right. We did. I’m addicted to him, and so is he!

But, thank God, I was able to get my feelings out, get great advice and encouragement, and I’m back on the path to healing again. Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement. Don’t count me out yet. This war isn’t over !!!

Ok. It’s a little off the message, but I want this sign for my bedroom. :-) It makes me laugh.

Love, Bird