It's Over!

It feels so wierd to be "single;" I still don't really think of myself that way. It's more like "DIVORCED," which sucks in a way but is also better than the alternative. The hearing went pretty smoothly, both outwardly and inwardly. My parents, sister and friend came along, and the best word to describe my emotional state that day is "relieved." Now I'm on a rollercoaster, of course, but I guess I expected that. The future is wide open.

Dec. 5: Get Rid of Husband

It will officially be over on Friday!! I put a reminder in my phone for this Friday, the day of our divorce hearing, to "get rid of husband." It excites me. I'm actually going to have a future now; I'll be a lawyer in a few years if all goes as planned. When I think about my life I don't want to crawl in a dark hole anymore...at least not most of the time.

Ranting again...

I haven't written in a while because my thoughts are too disturbed to share sometimes. I'm getting through each day, but it seems like every couple of weeks there's a new, devastating peice of information that I can't process. I won't share the newest one just yet - maybe I won't at all - because there comes a point where it's too painful to share with you just how little my husband loved me. I feel like I sound pitiful and sympathy-starved, but I don't want pity, just permission to pour out my heart when I need to, however messy the contents. And if you are tired of my rants, I guess you can always stop reading... :)

Falling apart, once again

My lowest point seems to be getting lower every day. I am exhausted and so ready for this process to be over with. Isn't the pain supposed to subside with time? I guess it kind of has; I think I was just more numb before. Now the numbness is wearing off and I'm feeling everything, like a fistful of raw nerve. On lunch today I plan to sleep in my car for the entire hour and maybe feel a little more hopeful in the afternoon. I'm pretty sure death is not supposed to be a daydream...

2 Month Update

I'm over 2 months into this and still not over the shock of my husband and best friend walking out on me. It's like tremors after a huge earthquake, and peices of me keep crumbling with each one. When people say I'm strong I don't know where they're seeing it. I wish I didn't feel like he took so much; I wish I had preserved more of me. I find myself freaking out about unknowns these days because I don't want to be blindsided by something again.

This weekend I was talking to Sam about traveling and how we can't get stuck in Mt. P forever, and I realized that was my future with Noah - Mt. P forever, trying to keep the fish store afloat, never traveling beyond Walmart...what a nightmare! So ultimately I'm very lucky to have escaped him, but I could have made his life worth more just because I loved him so much. Is that conceited? I don't mean to be, I just think that love adds so much value to life, and I really loved him. But since I never really knew him I'm getting over that. I don't love who he really is because he's completely motivated by his own self. I don't even love who I thought he was because it never existed.

D-Day

He's reached a new level of low today. I cannot wait to have him out of my life forever and be free to find out what's ahead. I realized I don't know what a good marriage looks like because my experience gets worse every day. I might just let go of my desire to have the type of family I always thought I would have; it's time to rethink my perception of family. Don't be alarmed, I'm still the same Sarah somewhere in there...at least part of me is the same. But it's so hard to imagine trusting a man again. I'm convinced he has lost what good was there at one point; he is here for himself alone and anyone in his life at this point is there because he sees something in them that he can use to his own advantage. He doesn't know what love is, and for that reason Lindsey or anyone after her will only be used up in the end. Is it horrible to confess I wish either he or I would have died before all of this came out? Then I would have only had "good" memories.

Pondering

I have never experienced so much restlessness and penetrating sadness in my life. I want to run somewhere and get lost; I don't want anyone to be able to find me. Lately this question keeps running through my head: who does that? Don't most people, even couples who have been dating or married forever, break up better than this? Aren't there usually conversations and crying and conclusions that are come to semi-mutually? Who does this?? I cast around in my mind for answers; here are some of them: He must think I'm not a real person. I must be that worthless to him. There's something wrong with who I am that I don't know about. He must not be a real person. He's just that much of a coward. I've done something to deserve this.



I just can't wrap my mind around the cowardice and disdain it would take to go about things this way. As much as I have realized he's not who I thought he was, somehow I thought he was at least better than this...

.....

All my friends and loved ones have told me to take care of my body, but it feels kind of good to abuse myself physically by lack of sleep and food. I feel like it alters my state of mind, numbing me so I can get through the day. So many emotions, I can't even tell you. So many secrets kept, even dating back to the times I thought we were happy together. I guess my love was never prized, even though he fought so hard for me. He fought for selfish reasons while I fought for him. Feeling your heart break again every day is torture; I can't explain what goes through my head. If you're reading this and believe in miracles, please pray.

Ouch...

The knife keeps twisting deeper through my heart, although I can only be thankful for what I've escaped. Noah has a girlfriend; I don't know how long they've been seeing each other, but I have an idea. I don't think I was out of the picture. I could never describe how much this hurts and releases me at the same time. I can only imagine the disdain he held for me in his heart while I loved him shamelessly; now he's gone and I see him for the person he is, and I'm horrified. I will never be the same person I was; I hope that's a good thing, but in so many ways I've lost innocence and trust. And a huge portion of my heart. I feel myself hardening and looking at men in a different light. I don't want to become someone who uses people, but I don't want to trust again.

Loneliness...

...it's slowly decomposing my sense of worth. I'm trying to keep my head above this; trying to cling to the truth and make sense out of why I'm here. My mom says "Life is worth the pain." I don't know if it is, and that's the honest truth of what's in my heart. I have been here before, I know this place and I know I should run, but I just sit here, alone and in pain. I know I'll overcome these thoughts; I will do the right thing in the end. But you can't convince me at this moment that my life is worth this...though I still want you to try.

Hum Drum

Life is settling into monotony again...I guess that's better than chaos and pain, but in some ways it's discouraging. I want it all to be finalized and over so I can say I am single and move on from there. I hate being "technically" married but not having a husband.

Crumbling

The world is a disaster! This year so many things have blindsided me, whether they had anything to do with me or not. I feel like so many marriages have fallen apart in 2008 and I don't know why; but I am 100 times more sensitive to the people I know who are going through a divorce, for obvious reasons. I'm kind of thankful for the abrupt ending of mine when I see what other people are facing. The more I see marriages working out the more I'm amazed and wonder how people are celebrating 30th wedding anniversaries. I love this quote by C.S. Lewis:

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."

Be courageous, my little heart!

Confusion

I'm in limbo not knowing what is happening with so many things. I'm confused by feelings because what I felt before turned out not to be true; how can I trust how I feel now? I guess you're not supposed to trust your feelings. The heart is desperately wicked.

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." -- C.S. Lewis

This quote describes exactly what I'm going through -- grief that feels so much like fear. When I think about how everything happened, I am absolutely grief-stricken and still somewhat in shock; and fear is always present, even though I have essentially been freed from an oppressive relationship that could have consumed what I have left of myself.

But I'm not afraid at the moment, if you can believe that. I am accepted by my Maker, and I am accepting that (it's a process).

I was doing so well...

Now I just hurt. Somehow I have jumped from a shaky perch at the top of my fragile dreams and plummetted to the concrete of reality below. I'm broken. I desperately want to be fixed, but there's nothing to do but wait for help.

The Plan

I am organizing my life like crazy now. I have a plan and it's amazing! I'm going to law school next fall, provided I can pass the LSAT in December...

I know this high will pass at some point and I will have to struggle through the reality of sleepless, lonely nights, but right now I am full and I'm enjoying it. I'm full of grace and peace, and full of compassion for Noah. I wish he could have the peace I have right now, but his decisions have lead him away from peace and I have to let him go. Some day I will be the kind of woman I've always dreamed of being, and it won't be because I got bitter over this. I forgive Noah, and by God's grace I will continue to do that because I know there will be more anger too.

"If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense." -- C.S. Lewis, "The Problem of Pain"

Thoughts

Nights require so much strength for me, I think because I used to look forward to seeing him when I got out of work. But days are easier now...I'm dreaming of the future and law school. So now I have to plan my life out, and it's kind of exciting, although I'm rather Jekyll and Hyde emotionally right now. Sometimes it's like I just have to mentally push all feeling and emotion to the back burner so I can gather a little more strength for the next breakdown. I'm trying to take care of me but I don't really know how, since I felt selfish doing that in my marriage. It was really all about him, and I was ok with that. I thought I was trying to be the best wife ever, and I'm not ashamed to say that I would have become whatever he needed. I know that's not God's plan for marriage, but I was that committed, and I had a pure heart.

I can't imagine loving anyone else like I loved Noah, but I think that's a good thing. Our love wasn't healthy because he took and I gave and I would have given everything for the rest of my life and been left with nothing to show for it. I think about the recurring nightmares I used to have; I would wake up crying and beg him not to leave me like he did in my dreams, and I wonder how I knew I had to be afraid of that. I do take comfort in the fact that, while I might have been somewhat of a doormat of a wife, I gave what is required and more and would have gone through hell with him.

Time

Time exists for me in the form of many different emotions, all with different intensities.

Rejection
Terror
Self-hate
Hate
Love
Loneliness
Anguish
Doubt
Courage
Sympathy
Rage
Jealousy
Panic
Grief

The list goes on, but the minutes of my existence are counted by the vacillation of all of these and more. I feel damaged beyond repair. Who can love me if not my husband? I don't even know if I can anymore.

Intro to Healing

Today is Monday, August 11th, 2008 and I am still breathing. One week ago today my husband of two years stood in the doorway of our home and told me he wanted to leave me. I've pulled myself together as much and even more than I could have expected and yet all I have today is the strength to keep sucking a little oxygen into my lungs. Thank God for family and friends and in-laws who still love me.

Yesterday Caz preached on the Kingdom of Heaven. I have to keep asking myself:
Am I poor in spirit?
Yes, my spirit is absolutely crushed.
Am I mourning?
More than I ever have in my life.
Am I meek?
I don't know. I'm humbled by the intensity of things right now to the point of terror.

So the Kingdom of Heaven is mine. Awesome. I don't know what to do with that. I think you're supposed to feel ecstatic about it; maybe someday I will. Right now I have so many questions, like what's so repulsive about me that the person I love the most and have given up the most for would decide to walk into our home, wake me up and basically (though not in so many words) tell me I'm no longer good enough for him? That I don't make his life worth the effort to stick it out with me? That I'm not even worth an explanation longer than "I haven't been happy for eight months?" My mind is blown to pieces right now and I have to believe I'm better off on my own.