Love is patient, love is kind...so it goes...

I'm here again and I just feel so far.. from everyone and I get this moment of total terror when I think for a split second.. what if, just what if this time I can’t find my way back? These horrible sadness's and hollow feelings, brought on by pain are getting longer and longer and harder and harder to bear. I've read books and the articles, all kinds of articles on depression, watched shows and heard stories.. and I think, is this it, I’m I finally past the point of sad or everyday depressed and really actually clinically depressed? Then I think, no, I can’t be because I’m questioning it. So I’m not crazy. But then again, crazy and depressed are not the same thing are they. My trigger is heart break. That is always what wraps its hands around my throat and tries to drown me, pull me down and keep me under. Its fingers slick and powerful on my neck, forever squeezing. Sometimes my vision even goes black. I just blank out. The physical pain too intense and heavy to hold. It simply just crushes you, your voice, your motivation. Your only escape is to sleep. Sleep is comfort. Sleep will hold me. Sleep is the only friend I have in this war, the only refuge. There I feel safe, it’s like that air pocket in the sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean. The only oxygen you have, the only place that you can stick your head out and breathe… slowly, deliberately. Knowing that its all you’ve got standing between you and death.

But is death really so bad? Shame on me for asking, I must really be sick. At this point I say report me. I wouldn’t mind a little medication, a little numbing of the mind, to take the sting out of the heart would be more than welcome. To feel nothing would be a blessing. I think that in the big moments in life, when things are falling apart I jump in, I forgive, I triage, and I try to get the ones I love out alive, with minimal damage and injury to them, to their hearts. My kids I protect at all costs. Even my husband. The man I love and still the man who has crushed my heart time and time and time again, I worry for him… first. Care and forgive him first for fear he won’t be able to deal, that I know the truth and that is that he is weaker than me, but I can't afford to give him the chance to prove it. I cry.. a bit, but then shut off, shut down, from shock, denial, fear. Fear of facing what kind of permanent damage that I may have incurred in all of this. I fear that I will never be able to give to him my heart, myself wholeheartedly, that the complete trust in him I once had won’t return, that we will forever and always be this less than, 80% version of ourselves, because we just can’t get past it. I try to look at him now, as who he is now and only that, not who he was, or who I want him to be, or his mistakes. When I do this part of me softens to him, but part of me also panics, because this is the guy that did these things, this is the stranger that I didn’t know existed in him, and I’m afraid that he'll always be, this stranger. That if this is the him now, then is this the man I love? Most days I think absolutely, but doubt is so powerful. I know, how can she admit this on paper. Why wouldn’t I? Hiding it doesn’t help me, it doesn’t help him. Pretending doesn’t fix anything. I don’t want to pretend. I know that a lot of people will say fake it till you make it. And normally not only would I listen, I would advocate, this has been my motto for years, through all kinds of hell, and trust me when I say I have been to hell and back. But sometimes, in this case, I don’t have it in me to pretend. I want whatever this is to be real and of itself. To be true. I want to begin again... Start over with a new foundation, because that old one is rotten. And if we try to build on it, it will crack and bend and break. It will fall apart from the inside out, and take us both with it. And in the rubble you will find us broken and left for dead. We need a strong foundation…

So is it possible to have that? To build it again. Can we be the architects of our own futures, can we be the footing and foundation of each others lives going forward? It’s not about forgiveness. I forgive. I really and truly do. It’s about trust. Trust and forgiveness are two very different things. I feel walls between us. They go up without effort. Defenses that have gotten more impenetrable with time and hurt. How? Where do I even begin? I want to. I’m tired of holding down this fort alone. I have ALWAYS hated the game of solitaire. I’m not wired that way, despite the countless time that I wish I was, the reality is that I'm just not. I can mimic it really well out of necessity, I can be hard and tough and independent. I know how to get things done and take care of myself, but I don’t WANT that. I have never wanted that. The undeniable truth is that I need him, that I love him, more than I can stand. That my love for him is exactly why he is the one person that can break me. Ruin me. Almost effortlessly, it is also why he is one of the only people in the whole world that scare me, because he walks around everyday with the power to bring me to my knees and destroy me with a few mere words and he doesn’t even know….

And everyday, I just try and make myself ok with the knowledge of that.

The thing is, is that it’s such a paradox… because while I am feeling all of this, there are moments when all he has to do is smile, or touch my back, place his arm around me and I fall for him all over. .. and he whispers he loves me and I forget everything...for a moment. Just a split second, but I am happy again in those moments, and I believe every word. I really BELIEVE it. I fall so easily for him over and over and over again. Maybe what I’m really scared of is me. Maybe its me that I don’t really trust around him, because I’m so quick to fall, to believe...to hope… and there is nothing worse than feeling stupid, and nothing more powerful or dangerous as hope.

I want to give myself to this, to him, to be all in and never doubt it, or look back, but how do you change your instincts once bitten. You keep looking back to make sure, to feel safe.

I just want to love him again, with all of me and feel completely safe. .. maybe that’s why I have such a hard time being happy, because to me happiness doesn’t feel safe anymore. Every time I've started to let myself really be happy and trust again, its been ripped away.. I just want the two to be synonymous once again, with his name, with us.

I’m willing to try because I don't want to give up, on him, on us, our family. ..because I am wired with faith to my own detriment it seems, but what else do I have left if I let go of possibility? Of the ability to BELIEVE in something better? That we all are worth it, we are all possible of redemption? So much of me is him, and him in me, that without him, I’m not whole. Huge chunks of me would be missing. Here is hoping that my faith will not be in vain. That love can really win out in the end...

"Love is patient, love is kind... it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." - 1 Corinthians 13: 4,7-8

Love please don't fail me now. ..I am trying so hard to see the good...


“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five