Breaking Point

“Show me somebody who’s gone through divorce without feeling deep aching loneliness and I’ll show you somebody who never felt love.”

May 2015

I have dreaded writing this. I think because I feel like it invalidates so many of my blog posts. It feels like failure. I am tired of this cycle. It hurts like nothing I have ever experienced. The pain is so tangible I can almost reach out and touch it. I can’t breathe. I feel paralyzed by fear and loneliness.

I have to stop the pain. Numb it, destroy it.

In April of 2015 I reached a very difficult breaking point. It was ugly. In order to save my life, I picked up and moved with my 3 and 4 year old girls to Utah. It was one of the scariest decisions I have ever made, but I needed to be surrounded by family. My oldest daughter wanted to finish school in Arizona before she joined us. I left her with Seth for 6 very long weeks. Honestly, I was losing my mind being by myself in Arizona. I was in crisis and not having family around when so many traumatic things were taking place was not healthy. My 3am panicked phone calls to my parents had to stop. I had to find a way out. 

When I got to Utah it was like I could finally breathe again. In Arizona it was just me, Seth and the girls. We were in a never ending cycle of crazy, living in a tiny fishbowl. He and I aren’t great at communication, never have been. We struggle with our differences.

But I had to face reality.

Could I fight for my girls? Was I strong enough to finally let go of my marriage? I fought so hard to make it work. I fought hard to “fix” and make up for my shortcomings. I’ve always felt like the challenges that I faced in my life are destroyers. They destroy dreams. They destroy relationships. And then finally, they destroy people. Because they are a burden it means I am a burden. The challenges are difficult so I am difficult. The shame and responsibility I feel for these failures never ends.

It was time to break down all the ways I had convinced myself I was horrible. To regain my self-worth.

You are not a good mother.

You are a terrible wife.

You are a failure.

Come on, look at everybody else who has it together. Why don’t you? 

Lies.

Goodness. Life is messy. It is not cookie-cutter and Pinterest boards.

Trying is not failing and forgiveness is incredibly powerful. I needed to find a way to be a good mother my way and finally forgive myself. Let my past be exactly that. The past.

I began to do my research on Arizona child custody laws. Getting advice from attorneys and I started taking the proper steps to make that happen. This was a really big moment for me. I started participating in my life again. I had to let my work go. I needed time to organize all of my thoughts and to put my girls first. I tried really hard.

But the loneliness kept creeping in. Enveloping me at night. How long can I stay in bed before someone notices I haven’t showered in 5 days? Please don’t see me. Please let me be invisible for just another day. Maybe things will be better tomorrow. Maybe …

Loving through Pain

I am going to have to work hard if I want to get my blog current. There is just so much great information to cover and I don’t want to leave anything out. And thanks everyone!! I can’t be more excited. My blog is almost to 2000 views!!! It has been seen in 4 countries. This is so amazing and unexpected! I am extremely humbled. I really hope it is helping people.

What happened next is another phenomenal miracle in my life. It is still happening to this very day. I don’t feel the pain, anxiety, depression, or suicidal thoughts anymore. He took the darkness away. I feel extreme happiness. I guess dying will do that to a person. What a great gift God decided to give me. Because without it, I would not be here. And there is a VERY big reason I am still living. And you will get to see it play out. Maybe one of the reasons I am here is to write these very words. Who knows?

After the 22nd, I have talked about how my life changed. My love for Seth and my family changed. My love for myself changed. But Seth understandably wouldn’t let me in. At all. It hurt. It was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. I had finally found myself, and was becoming the woman I had always wanted to be -that HE wanted me to be- and he didn’t want anything to do with it. With me. And I was pretty convinced that would never change. The divorce was still going forward.

I had a friend who decided she wanted to go on a vacation to Los Angeles and asked me to come along. At the time, even though my joy was bursting out of every cell in my body, it made no difference to Seth. So I took her up on the offer. I told my parents I was going on a vacation and they thought it was a good idea as well. I had been through so much, and a vacation might take my mind off things for a while. I was still living away from home with my roommate and I packed my bags. But I felt sick inside. Regret, darkness, fear. I pushed those feeling aside because Seth and my parents told me that getting away might be good for me. So it had to be, right? It was an impulsive decision. I came to my home to say goodbye to my girls, and something inside me knew. If I left for L.A., I might never come back. Something there would change me forever. That opportunity to spend some time with my girls Seth decided to take them swimming so it didn’t have much time with them to say goodbye. I was angry. He knew I needed to spend some time with them before I left. And the anger grew. It was first time since “The Day” that I felt that much negative emotion. I do regret that day, but I know what I was fighting for I NEEDED this time with my girls. I knew why I was so hurt and mad. If I left I wouldn’t come back, possibly ever. And this was my only chance to hug them, kiss them, hold them for the last time.

After the BIG fight, I got in my car and left. I drove to Mesa where my friend lived, but instead of going to her house, I somehow ended up in the Mesa Temple parking lot. I had never been there before, and I have no idea how I got there. I was just driving and there it was on the right hand side. So I parked, and let the feelings wash over me. My friend was anxious to leave. Her boyfriend had just committed suicide the week before. She was losing custody of her kids. She needed to get away. But every time I thought of leaving, darkness overtook my mind. I could barely think. I sat there for hours. And then I finally made a choice. The choice. I was scared to upset my friend, but I finally called her and told her I couldn’t go. And she was mad, really mad. But it was the right thing to do and I finally felt peace.

My dad called just after I made the decision. I can’t believe how much he and I felt the same things. I mean we were 12 hours away from each other. He didn’t know all the details and drama in my life, other than what I told him on the phone. But he somehow KNEW. He asked where I was. He told me to go back home, that he had been thinking all day and felt sick about me leaving. I told him I was already on my way home. He told me to stay and fight for my family. I told him that I was. He told me to move back home and fight, that it was time to stick it out, stay there no matter what. I told him that I was already setting that plan in motion. It would be hard to love someone who didn’t want to be loved anymore. Who was so hurt he couldn’t even function in his life. But I would love him through his pain. No matter how long it took.

I went home. Obviously there were bad feelings from earlier in the day from our argument. I flat out told him that I was done living apart. I was going to come home whether he wanted me to or not. That I was ready to fight for him, and I wasn’t going to walk away anymore. I was staying for good.

I gathered my things from my roommates house while she was gone to work the next day and I never came back. I know I didn’t get the chance to pack everything that was mine, but I had to get home fast. I could buy new things and nothing was going to get in my way because  I was going home. To FIGHT  – with love and compassion. With allowing him time to heal. By showing him what I knew I was becoming. I stayed. And I fought. Nothing ever felt as good as that decision I made that day. Peace and relief washed over me again and has never left. But the decision to stay would prove to be difficult. It was a choice I had to make over and over again every single day. It took a long time, but not as long as I thought. One day, he broke down and let me in. Six months to the day after I died. Coincidence? I don’t believe in them…and you shouldn’t either.

Hospitals and Divorce

People always tell me I’m a bit too honest, and they are right. Hopefully you can appreciate that side of me, because to be perfectly honest, I think we could all use a lot more of it in our lives. Let’s dive back in-

In March of 2013 I was in my 4th hospital stay. My family and I were 13 months in to the hardest time we had ever experienced, which is saying a lot for my life. Both of us were exhausted and we didn’t have much hope that there would ever be answers. Let me clarify something first (and I will do a different blog post about this) I have always been diagnosed with a Mental Illness. I suffered with severe depression and anxiety since I was 15 years old and from that time until now I have tried over 100 medications to help alleviate the symptoms. With a Traumatic Brain Injury, metal illness is very common. After I had my babies, my normal ‘mental illness’ state was magnified 10 times because it was compounded with the hormonal imbalance that caused my severe postpartum depression.

So back to March. I couldn’t take the strain I was causing my family. I could see the most stoic, calm, confident husband start to crumble under the pressure. He was in his 2nd year of Pharmacy School and he was in the middle of one of the hardest quarters of his entire grad school experience. The divorce talks started. I fell apart. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have been given a more ‘normal’ life experience. And just so you know, normal doesn’t exist. It is such a facade. Please don’t ever compare yourself to someone else’s normal. Constantly comparing yourself to the others in this world will place you in a state of captivity and you are the one who builds the jail. My personal prison was 100 miles thick. But there are ways to break the prison walls down, and hopefully I can teach you how at some point. It takes a lot of practice, patience and compassion – yes, for others – but mostly for yourself.

Anyway, I pulled myself together enough to get released from the hospital. I felt a bit better. I organized a clothing drive because people would come into the hospital with nothing, just the clothes on their backs. They would be given paper clothes to wear and it was completely degrading, especially for the women. Midwestern University and my neighborhood rallied together. I ended up washing at least 20 loads of laundry of donated clothes and taking them to the hospital. Needless to say the hospital workers were shocked, and grateful.

That was a moment of clarity in my endless storm, but it was just masking the underlying symptoms that I tried to keep at bay. I was still depressed. I still had big problems. I had a hysterectomy in December 2012 from complications (will be another post) and we still hadn’t figured out the right hormone balance. Finally, June 27th I cracked. Worse than I ever have in my life. It was my oldest daughters 7th birthday. I couldn’t get out of bed to help celebrate it, all the medication I had been given over the hospitalizations made me lethargic, apathetic, basically I just didn’t have the energy to care anymore. But not being able to care enough to celebrate her birthday ruined me inside. I saw the last 7 years of my life as a complete failure with no hope in sight. I won’t go into detail of what transpired, because that is not what my blog is about. But that is how I ended up in my 5th and final hospital.

Knowing that my future with my husband would be centered around our impending divorce, I decided I had to pull myself together and try to get better for my kids. I knew my marriage couldn’t be saved, but I had to try to find a way to become the mother I had always wished, wanted and prayed that I could be. I told every person at the hospital that I was planning on staying there until I actually felt better. Truly better, no temporary band-aids. I worked hard. I went to all my groups. I tested out more medications. While I was in the hospital my husband came to visit. We had a very civil conversation about how the divorce would go, who would end up with the kids, where we would live, how to divide our assets and debts. It was the calmest conversation we had ever had. We had decided the best thing was for me to not come back home, that I needed to find a temporary place to live while we worked out the divorce details.

I was finally released after almost 4 weeks. I felt better. I felt I had finally planted my feet on solid ground. The medication was helping and I found a place to stay with someone who needed a roommate. But my heart would ache every single day, longing for the love lost after 11 years of marriage. Knowing that what tore us apart was something we both admitted was out of our control. My illness was making everyone miserable, and we had kids to think about. In our days apart thoughts would fill my mind. My future would be filled with scheduling my visits with my kids around my husband and his potential new wife and family. I would never remarry because I would never place the burden of my illness on another person again. I knew that I would have to live with the feelings of loneliness for the rest of my life. Talk about renewed depression!

Then, the day of all days happened. The events of this day I will NEVER forget. July 22, 2013