My story is common, which is funny considering I thought I was alone in the world in my issues, my drama. Through reading, working, and just plain living I realized it’s not. I take comfort in that just as I hope you take comfort in my words.
I met and married the man of my dreams at eighteen. We were in love, it was idyllic, beautiful, everything the romance novels said it would be. I have full faith that he felt the same way. We traveled all over the world due to his job and enjoyed our three children. He was an excellent father and a loving husband but somewhere along the lines, we lost communication. Skipping the details, we fell apart after fifteen years. I was blindsided. I was under the impression that we can get through anything. My world fell apart; here I was, in my thirties facing a single life that I had never entered into before, new, hard, fun, yet so very strange. I never imagined myself single, never thought to try and learn to flirt again, to date, to accept men at face value.
When my husband left me with nothing (he even had the children) I was left to fend for myself. Such pain I had never felt complete heartbreaking pain.
Miracles happen every day when we least expect them. I lived—that was my miracle. I survived despite my daily prayers for death. I found a job, found friends, found women who knew what I had went through.
I turned to a different outlook. I grabbed on to the old adages that still give me comfort. When God closes a door, He opens a window. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger … these are cliché words and phrases but still have a ring of truth. I live now. I survive now. I still have the old rage and bitterness flare up on occasion but when that happens I turn to another comforting phrase … suck it up and drive on!
I am still single but I do enjoy a relationship with my ex, something we hadn’t had in years. Our fighting is done. We share our children and we make it work for them. I don’t date. I still find myself disillusioned and jaded by my history … but that is another story. Life goes on, despite sometimes best efforts to make it stand still or disappear altogether. Embracing the life you are given in spite of the anger, the pain, despair we may face at times. I believe is better than the alternative.
