Today (well technically yesterday since it is 5:30am) is my 32nd birthday. I received SO much love today! Oh my goodness! This might have been the most love-filled day I've ever had. Thank you from the center of my heart. To each and everyone one of you! Thank you for sharing love. I feel it from the tips of my toes to the ends of each strand of hair on my head! Now that's a whole lotta love!
I happen to love my birthday.... not everyone feels that way about their birthdays. I like looking back over each year and seeing what has changed.
Looking back over my 31st year, I can honestly say I have no idea how I survived it. Yes, I spend a lot of time posting about happy things. And I am taking a moment to be very fully open and vulnerable here... to give you all a very real picture of my last year of life. I'll keep it short and won't draw it out, considering it was mainly miserable... but it also is true...
Last year at this time, I had been separated from my husband for 5 months. I was severely depressed and cried nearly every day for about 300+ days. When he returned back to AK in February, I thought things would get better. Boy was I wrong. Things not only got worse, they got worse then I could imagine. I had family members questioning why I didn't return phone calls. The last thing I wanted to share with anyone was how incredibly miserable I was and how every aspect of my life was so painful I didn't know how I'd make it through each and every day. I'd fall asleep in tears and wake up in tears, miserable to be waking up in the same life that I had fallen asleep to. One dreadful month bled into the next and I wondered how one heart could continue on...
I took up rock climbing and kung fu to beat up and terrify the demons that continuously haunted my thoughts and my heart. I do believe those two activities, actually, saved my life. The summer months rolled in and my divorce was final in the middle of June. I was hoping things would feel magnificently different. They didn't. The day after a divorce is finalized, nothing changed. I still awoke to a broken life I never expected. Two weeks after the divorce was legal, I get a phone call learning that my now ex-husband has gotten his, I don't know what you call her, pregnant. He found out the day after the divorce... The pain seems to be never ending. The blows seem to be continuous. I don't believe there is enough rocks in this world to climb my way out of the agony. The two hour kung fu classes leave my body exhausted but my mind still has no problem beating me up all night long. I cry. Eventually I realize that crying doesn't help. I surround myself with insensitive people to keep me from talking about my pain. To keep my tears in check. That doesn't seem to help either. They just build up and when I am around a kind friend, I lose it. Weeks worth of tears come flooding out. I honestly had no idea how I would get through.
Fall comes around and life feels a little bit better. I'm able to breath, some days. The crying starts to lessen to a few times a week, and not every evening. It's now too cold to rock climb. Kung fu continues to be my therapy. But I still need more. I take up running. Dancing. Yoga. Krav Maga. If I don't keep moving, I slip backwards. Must. keep. moving. forward.
I got a text last week letting me know that his baby was born.
A new pain shows up. Thoughts I've never even had before lash out at me. I choose, this time, to not speak of it. To anyone. Thinking maybe if I keep it all to myself the pain won't over take me. Two days later, I am sick. New Years Eve, my throat starts to hurt. My lungs fill with tightness. I awake on January 1 and feel like I can't breathe. A cold has settled itself into my lungs with a vengeance. I take it, not talking about it wasn't the best option either.
I was very excited for a Full Moon Yoga workshop tonight to ring in my 32nd year. My coughing is so bad I have to leave the workshop half way through because I feel so bad for disrupting everyone else. I walk into the bathroom to wait for the next hour til the workshop is over so I can gather my things from the quiet peaceful room. The song on the speakers happens to be a song that reminds me of him. "Really life? Really?" I pick up my phone. He texts at that exact moment to wish me a happy birthday. I shake my head at the timing. I decide to call. We talk. I don't ask many questions. My heart can't bear to hear the answers.
....I keep thinking one day I'll be strong enough and things just won't hurt any more.... and maybe the crying will stop..... maybe. one day. .........
I never, in a million guesses, would have been able to guess how my 31st year of life would turn out. One blow after another after another.... after another....
And yet.... what I did get out of the past year: a group of solid friends who absolutely love me. And they let me know. Often. :)
I also learned you are never too old, even at 32, to snuggle with a teddy bear at night. They never complain about snot, tears, or bad breath.
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