Tidal wave

My last quiet time was a mess.  

It started out pretty normal.  Sitting quietly in my usual spot.  Fan humming softly in the background.  My breath steady and calm.

The first 10 minutes or so were relatively quiet.  A random thought about the upcoming day would pop up and then drift away.  Another to-do floats by.  I notice it and let it pass.

Then all hell breaks loose.

I'm working with mindfulness and being present with whatever comes up.  I'm trying to be fully present in the moment and just notice the thoughts and feelings.  "What is coming up for you?" is a question I hear often in my quiet time.

What came up out of no where this time was a full blown tidal wave of grief.  

One moment I'm sitting, breathing, noticing the ground beneath me, the fan humming beside me, the cool air on my skin.  The next moment there are tears streaming down my face. There is a deep, almost burning, pain in my throat as it suddenly swells and I feel like I have to struggle to breathe. My entire being is overwhelmed by a sadness so strong and so deep and so very real that it takes everything in me to just keep breathing.

My heart feels like someone has it in an iron grip trying to wring every last drop of blood out of it, twisting and wringing it excruciatingly in opposite directions.  My pulse quickens as my heart desperately tries to escape.

I am suddenly swimming in a dark whirlpool of chaotic grief.

In just a little over two weeks my family will change again in a very real way.  First (two years ago) it was the divorce and now (in two weeks) it's my move.  My youngest and I will be moving to Texas and my two bigger kids are staying here in Philly.  

This is a decision which I have agonized over for a very long time.  I have spent so much time in prayer and thoughtful consideration talking this over and over again with the many wise counselors (family and friends) in my life.   The consensus has been that the move is what is best for me and my kiddos (originally it included all of my children, until the eldest two made the decision to stay here with their dad).

I knew their choice to remain here was a possibility.  It will be my oldest's senior year.  So I kind of guessed he might stay.  My middle has decided she wants to stay with her friends here rather than move.  

Once I made the final decision to move I felt a very real peace about it.  And in spite of their choice to stay here, I still know without a doubt that I'm making the right choice.  But that knowledge doesn't help me process through the overwhelming feelings of sadness that I'm drowning in.

I want to run away from it more than words can ever begin to explain.  

I don't want to worry about planning custody schedules and visitation. I don't want to be able to easily count out how many days in the year I'll spend with them. 

I want my family to just be a family.  Together.

I want to hear the backdoor slide open in the afternoon and get to holler, "Hey babe!  How was school?" and hear my middle one answer, without thinking that in another week or so I will never do that with her again.

I don't want to miss the minute of conversation I get with my son between the time he gets in from school and before the video game gets started.  It's only a minute, but I never take it for granted.  And next school year I won't have that. I wanted one more year.

My heart broke when my marriage ended.  And now my heart is breaking again.  

I keep feeling like I've honored and given space for all of these emotions to rise to the surface.  I keep hoping that this tear is the last tear.  Then the tidal wave happens again. 

I am a mom.  I always wanted to be a mom. I love being a mom.  I knew my kids would eventually go off on their own.  I knew we would not always live under the same roof.  This is just SO not the way it was supposed to happen.

So as the sadness swirls and crashes around me I will do my best to stay afloat.  I'm drenched in tears and my chest is so very, very heavy. I am working, struggling, to just be present in the moment.  But when the present is so painful this shit gets awful difficult to sit with.

Today I sat with Broken Promises

Broken promises.

Today as I sat during my quite time this phrase kept popping up.

I noticed how this affected me most through tension I felt from the tightness in my neck, the clenching in my jaw and the heavy weight on my hunched shoulders.

It's strange how my shoulders can feel so heavy and still find their way to hang out with my ears all at the same time.  Sometimes I feel like I'm slowly morphing into the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

I took a deep breath and tried to straighten my posture a bit to relieve some of the pain.  I took another breath and settled in.

Broken promises.  The words just keep bouncing around.

In preparation for the move I've been sorting through piles of papers and a few old boxes in the attic. Multiple times I've come across old anniversary cards or birthday cards that I received from my ex.  I have not taken time to read through all of them. Honestly I've only glanced inside a couple of them and then only for a moment.  The handwriting is all too familiar and the words are all to lovely.

Each time I would notice tears coming to my eyes.

I don't really miss him anymore.  I have dealt with that specific part of this already.  I am comfortable being by myself now and familiar with the idea of being a single adult. Missing him is not where the tears come from.

Broken promises.

That seems to be the specific thing I'm having trouble working with. I don't even know that I fully understand it myself.  I don't miss my ex, but I'm still brought to tears when I am reminded of the love he had for me and the loss of future dreams. I find it baffling and rather irritating.

Over the weekend my ex stopped by to pick up my youngest for a few hours.  When he dropped her back off he asked about getting copies made of all the photo albums and scrapbooks I'd made over the years. Of course I had already put them all in boxes for the move.  He asked to take the boxes, make copies, repack, and return them.

I showed him where they were stacked in the garage and he loaded them into his car.  He'll bring them back. I'm not worried about that.  But the whole process was extremely difficult and infuriating for me.

The thought I had was, "Why does he care about having the pictures? This is what he threw away." And the child in me didn't want to share, didn't feel like he deserved his share.

As he drove off I found myself standing in the laundry room crying, tears streaming down my face.  I was not really sure why I was angry and crying, but there I stood, snot and all.

I have not been able to look at the old photo albums much since all of this began. They all held such wonderful memories that now seem tainted.  The few moments I have looked at an album I notice that instead of reminding me of all the fun moments that were captured, all I see is how it feels fake and shallow now.  

Broken promises.

We were a family.  We were always supposed to be a family.  I have grieved the loss of my partner, but somehow the loss of my family still breaks my heart.  He broke promises to me, to us, to all five of us.  I'm crying now as I write this, and I'm angry that I'm crying.

I'm so ready to be over all of this.  I don't want to sit with these feelings.  I don't want to feel the pain.  I don't want to notice anything about any of this.  I don't want to wipe any more snot from my face.  I'm tired of crying.

I don't want to have broken promises. I didn't break them and I can't put them back together.

I'm not the Hunchback.  I'm Humpty Dumpty.

And did I mention, I'm tired.

Embarrassed

Embarrassed.

That's the feeling I notice the most lately.

I continue to practice my daily quiet time.  Nine times out of ten I sit quietly in the early morning.  I wake one or both of my big kids up for school (depending on who is here or at their dad's) and then I take my usual spot for my quiet time.

I sit.  I breathe. I listen.  I pay attention. I notice.  I breathe.

This morning and the last few mornings I find my thoughts drifting to my divorce.  I am getting ready to move back to Texas in mid-June and I guess the preparation and packing is stirring up a lot of emotions.  And one of the feelings that just keeps lingering is the feeling of embarrassment.

I feel it in my chest and gut as I sit in my quiet time.  It feels like an uppercut sucker punch right to the pit of my stomach.  You know the kind that totally knocks the breath right out of you, leaves you gasping for air, and trying not to vomit all at the same time.

I want to run from the feeling, to escape and just be left alone.  I want that desperately, but I'm practicing mindfulness so instead I'm working on sitting with the difficult feeling. And work is certainly the proper word.

Hello Embarrassment.  So this is how I'm feeling today.

I'm embarrassed that I'm divorced.  I'm embarrassed that my marriage failed. I'm embarrassed that I trusted someone so completely and they let me down, and that maybe I let them down too.  I'm embarrassed that I couldn't keep things from falling apart.

I'm embarrassed that people talk and wonder about it.  I know most people are busy enough with their own lives that mine doesn't really matter a lot to them.  I know that. But I also know that when someone hears about a couple breaking up they wonder what happened (even if only for a couple of minutes of conversation).  Still they wonder, and I'm embarrassed that my marriage has been included in one of those conversations.

I'm embarrassed that my ex couldn't handle his mid-life crisis without blowing my family to bits.  I know this is my story.  I know he has his own story to tell.

I'm familiar with the saying, "In divorce there are three sides to every story. His side. Her side.  And the truth."  I know my story. I know I didn't want my marriage to end.  I know one person alone cannot make a marriage work.  If your partner wants to walk away there is not much you can do to stop them, and believe me I tried.

It's been two years since my ex moved out.  Two years.  And I'm still wading through all these stinking emotions.  Put your boots on people, there's a lot of shit to get through.  I'm embarrassed that I'm still knee deep in all this emotional shit.

So I'm sitting with embarrassment. It's uncomfortable. It's exhausting. It's nauseating. It's infuriating.

I breathe and way down beneath all the shit I also know there is a tiny seed of hope. I know this more than I feel it right now, but it's there.

I breathe and I know I'll be alright.  I know life goes on.  I know shit makes great fertilizer, but it also stinks to high heaven.

I breathe.  I breathe in embarrassment.  I breathe out hope.  I breathe in embarrassment.  I breathe out forgiveness.  I breathe in embarrassment.  I breathe out acceptance.

I breathe.

I'll let you know when the shit turns into flowers.