This is the Hardest and Most Vulnerable Story I'll Ever Tell You.

The paramedics called during the summer of 2016, two weeks after our wedding.

They had found him on a sidewalk, bloodied and unable to remember how he had gotten there. “Your husband is intoxicated,” they’d told me. “We’re taking him to the hospital.”

I didn’t know I had married an alcoholic.

What a foolish thing that sounds like when you write it. When I was 21, everything about our romance had felt like a fairytale. Two weeks into meeting him, he said I was the girl he was going to marry. 5 months later, he proposed. We didn’t spend a single day apart until our wedding, a year after we met.

Despite all of that, this is not even a story about my ex husband. It’s about the man I’ve been in love with for almost a decade. It’s taken me a very long time to be ready to share this story.

I had met Jordan 4 years earlier, when I was 17. Later, he’d tell me he saw me from across the room and thought,

“That girl is special. I need to go and talk with her.”

The briefest of conversations was the most pivotal moment in my life up to that point. That night set so many events into place, the effects rippling for years onward. We learned we were both from the same place in Orlando, and we shared many of the same circles there, in fact. When we spoke later after that night, I learned that we shared the connection of chronic illness. Mine with Diabetes, his with a kidney transplant. I learned he was a DJ and passionate about music. We shared a love of literature and intellectual conversation.

I felt a real connection with him, but I had a long term boyfriend I’d been dating for a few years when we met. Ironically, he was the reason I’d ended up in Macon…of all places. Then, he’d ironically also moved across the state after I moved there to start college. I had hoped to close our long distance gap.

It wasn’t until a year later, on the brink of a breakup, that we reconnected.

Jordan had moved back home from college, but was visiting friends back in Macon for the weekend. He invited me to coffee. We’d had a phone call just a few weeks prior, but aside from that, I’d met him only twice. When I accepted the invitation for that evening, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I didn’t return home to my dorm until he dropped me off at 4 in the morning. Neither of us wanted to end the night. The evening had passed and the coffee shop closed. We spent the entire night wandering the Mercer University campus, exchanging the entireties of details about our lives, who we were, who we wanted the other to know. Many of us can’t notice the inexplicable shifts that occur in our lives until we see them in hindsight, marking the point where we become changed people. But that night, I felt the shift. I discovered a kind of intimacy I’d never before felt in my life. It touched me inexplicably within my soul, in a way that has never changed, not once, since I felt this shift 10 years ago. If we’d never had any interaction after that night, I still would say I’d never felt closer to another human being.

I felt giddy the next day, full of butterflies and nervous jitters, disappointed to have to spend the day working, unable to think about anything but how immensely, unbelievably enjoyable spending the night talking had been. We texted each other the whole day, and we met up that night for a show he was playing. A pull that felt magnetic coursed through me that entire day. The kind that makes you feel like you’ve only ever read about love but never felt it before. Even now, ten years later, that feeling still remains. I remember seeing him as I walked in the room and lighting up. I was so aware of everything that night: the way our gazes lingered on each other, the way our legs brushed under the table after he’d finished playing his set. His friends had driven me there, but he volunteered to drive me back, just the two of us. Every moment just sitting next to him felt like it set my heart on fire. We stayed up the entire night talking again, and no matter how many hours passed, the conversation and the company never grew old: something I still feel even today. He felt like my closest friend even after just that weekend.

The next few months were filled with mountains of consequential moments for me. Jordan told me he liked me. I invited him to my college homecoming dance, and then I got so nervous, I almost didn’t go through with it. Over Thanksgiving we met up in Orlando, spending a sunlit day in my hometown of Winter Park, somewhere I’ve always found to be an idyllic place paved with brick streets, and shadowed by canopies of trees overhead. We played chess, I saw his family’s home for the first time, we held hands in his car, I cried on a swing over something my mom had said. We shared a moment on his dock at the lake and I felt like I could have kissed him then, but my fears of moving on from my first love held me back.

When I started second guessing myself, and got back together with ex boyfriend, Jordan insisted I was making a mistake.

“If you’re so angry at me, why are you still talking to me?” I asked.

“You know why,” he replied.

“Tell me,” I pushed him.

“Because I love you.”

We reconnected my senior year, after cycles of speaking, and my ghosting, him. Each time we talked, I couldn’t remember why I had chosen not to be with him. It was always the same story: I’d reach back out. We’d start talking until well into the morning, night after night. All of my feelings would flood back. We spent so many evenings walking around downtown Macon, braving cold nights, getting coffee at Jittery Joe’s, me thinking I was finally ready to act on my feelings: always second guessing myself. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. I hurt Jordan with my actions, but he never held it over my head. He was always the level headed one, imploring me to see things for what they were.

Every year on my birthday, since the first evening we’d had coffee together, he’d send me a beautiful mix of songs he created, telling a story through lyrics, song titles, and concepts, about us. The very first one was titled “ideal day”, inspired by a question he asked me as we were our getting to know each other: what my ideal day looked like. They grew more intimate as the years passed, exploring the nuances of our complicated relationship.

“The only walls we’ve got are the ones we build ourselves,” one of the songs in his mixes mused that year.

By the time my relationship finally ended, my senior year of college, Jordan and I again weren’t speaking. I still had yet to realize the cause to my poor dating choices. That was in order to feel needed, I looked for men I could try to fix. These relationships were unhealthy, but they felt normal. Safe. I struggled with codependency, having grown up with a complicated relationship with a father rarely in my life, and a cold family. I would later read books that write about how codependents will push away healthy relationships for this reason: they were uncomfortable, and this is exactly how Jordan made me feel. Uncomfortable. Unsure of the feelings I was having. He knew me better than anyone, but I couldn’t explain why that also made me feel like I wanted to run away and shut him out. I don’t think I wanted to face many of the things he implored me to confront within myself. Still, my feelings were so strong, so unlike anything I’d ever felt. They ran deeper than anything I’d experienced, which was what I knew always led me back to reaching out to him. I’d always wake up one day and out of the blue miss him so much I couldn’t stand it anymore.

The summer before I moved to Atlanta, Jordan came to visit. I was so nervous. It was a tumultuous time: my ex was stalking me, his post-breakup interactions having turned very abusive, and it made me paranoid and fixated on him, worried he would show up at any moment. The weekend wasn’t at all what I’d hoped it would be: an opportunity to solidify our relationship. Instead, it became a weekend of my paranoia intensifying with Jordan's presence, leading me to shut down almost the entire time, barely sharing my feelings, and certainly not moving our relationship forward in any meaningful way. I wanted to get out of Macon, to have a fresh start in the city and wash away old memories and hurt. I came to the conclusion that I just wasn’t ready for a relationship, and might not ever be, with him. For what I thought was the last time, I said goodbye to him after that weekend and again pushed him away. I’ll always remember that weekend: how hurt I knew I made him feel. “I worry,” he told me. “That there will be a day where you’ll wake up and regret that you made this choice. Where you’ll remember this moment, and wish you could have changed it. By then, it might be too late.”

I chose not to let myself think of this.

---

I managed to forget him for two years. I well and truly moved on in my life. Then, I found that I really did wake up one morning and was struck by the overwhelming need to talk to him. Jordan had been right about this.

He’d also been right about the other part: It was too late.

Because I realized it once I was already married.

That first summer after my marriage, I had struggled, in complete isolation, with the gut punch of realizing I’d married someone who had lied to me about who they were. Two incidences with paramedics, and nights of disappearing and not remembering where he went the next day. Hidden bottles found behind the trash can. I found I grew paranoid as I second guessed every action, every smell of what I thought might be alcohol on his breath. It felt like it had come from nowhere: surely it hadn’t, but I hadn't noticed any of these signs before. And then, one day, I got that call, and it was like a switch had flipped. I went to sleep in a fairytale one day, and the next I woke up in a story I didn't recognize.

But I felt I could tell no one. How could I? The shame I’d feel admitting I married someone too soon, and only a few months after our wedding … I was too proud to tell anyone. So I buried these thoughts, as deeply as I could, as long as I could.

Deeply troubled, I spent two weeks barely sleeping after I woke up that morning. But my thoughts felt deafening, and no matter how I tried to bury them, they kept resurfacing. Finally, I did the only thing that gave me peace: I sent Jordan a message.

I felt panicked. Lonely. I felt shame and guilt. Here was the truth: if I had known that the man I’d chosen to be with was an alcoholic, if he had been fully honest with me… I wouldn’t have gone through with the marriage. I felt pain and hatred towards myself for this realization. I grew up as a child of divorce, wanting desperately for my first marriage to be my only one. I felt a strong sense of Christianly duty to honor the vow I made through thick and thin. Imagine how I felt when almost literally all of a sudden, I couldn’t rid my head of these deafening and troubling feelings for someone else.

I realized I would therefore very likely live my life in love with a man I could never be with at the same time I came to the realization that I wasn’t strong enough to leave my marriage.

I didn’t want these feelings, or the questions they left me with. I didn’t want the solution: a complete upheaval of not just my life, but my husband’s. Unthinkable pain. I wanted to be a good person.

But the pain of his addiction, and hiding it from me, cut deeply. So did the realization that we were simply a bad match. Caught up in mutual codependency and naive romanticism, we had failed to stop and ask ourselves whether we operated in compliment, or opposition, to each other, prior to marriage.

I felt truly lost: like God had forgotten me. I went to church. I prayed to God and I asked him over and over why I felt the way I did. I wanted to cry out in church, "Here I am. Why can't I stop these feelings? Why is trying my hardest not enough to silence my doubts? Why can't you silence my thoughts?" I questioned my life. I mourned from the pain of mistakes I felt were permanent.

“You’re going to have to make a choice,” Jordan told me. “I’m not saying that for me. I’m saying it because you making a decision that prolongs and perpetuates your sadness will only prolong this negative cycle.” I knew he was right: I had to choose whether I wanted to move forward or remain in this cycle. I again chose the cycle.

Two weeks later, my husband found emails we'd exchanged while we were on our delayed honeymoon in Europe. I had felt both elated and sad on that trip. Elated to be overseas for the first time in my life. This, overshadowed in that I felt sad at how angry I was about what had been hidden from me. I felt bitterly heartbroken at how many doubts I had about my marriage. When he found those emails, though, I felt numb, and ashamed. As he cried at me, I knew I was in the wrong. I knew what a shock and betrayal this was to him, to see that I struggled with these emotions towards another person, that I hid them from him, and for him to read about how much I struggled to justify staying in our marriage. Emotionally cheating is a heavy thing to carry. But I was angry, too, and I snapped. “If you didn’t drink too much, this wouldn’t have happened,” I told him. Was that really true? I honestly didn’t know.

When he convinced us to go to counseling, things got better. I was relieved: I wanted to do anything to avoid facing the hard questions my dilemma posed. I so badly wanted us to mend things so that my life could be stable. The questions still loomed. What did it mean that still, no matter how hard I prayed in church, I could stop neither my questioning over whether I should be with someone else, nor ease the pain in my heart?

I wanted to dedicate myself to fixing my marriage. After losing his job from a drinking incident, I encouraged my husband to go to college. I threw myself into supporting his dream of going to medical school. I knew it would keep me busy, being in graduate school and working nearly 30 hours a week myself. I preferred this to allowing myself to stop and think about things.

If I thought this would change me, I was disappointed in how depressed and unsatisfied I still felt. I caught myself hoping that my husband would slip up, to give me a reason to leave. But what would it say about me, to leave a man struggling to become sober? I think it was wrong to both of us to wait for him to make a mistake first to leave. I was giving control of my life to someone else.

But I was too fearful to end things, worried about the pain I would cause, worried about the shame I would feel. Worried about what people would think, and filled with guilt: I felt I could never hurt someone I care about that badly. I promised myself I’d stop giving into my feelings, stop all communication with Jordan, and I did. It hurt me immensely to do so, and I wrote about my unhappiness and pain in my journal, which my husband picked up and read one day without telling me, then later confronted me on. I didn’t know how to make things better.

When the accident did happen, it shocked and shattered me. He showed up to swing dancing, drunk, a little over a year later. I remember laughing about that day in morbid humor: the day of the solar eclipse, the day people thought the world would end. It didn’t, but my world felt like it did.

He’d told me he would meet me there since he was late getting back from seeing the eclipse. I’d just started my first job, and had had to work. He drove my car there, and ran up and violently shoved off the partner I was dancing with, screaming in the middle of the crowded floor. My mind felt like it shut down. I sobbed, running out of the dance. Dancing had been my “place” for years. My happy place, my safe place. It’s where my husband and I had met. I felt violated and ashamed at the scene caused. I drove across town alone to a parking lot and sat there, after calling my husband’s mom, letting her know what had happened and crying over the incident.

It had been months since we'd talked, but I called Jordan. Instead of admonishing me, Jordan told me gently, “This can be the last time you hurt like this, if you want it to be.”

For almost year now, I’d tried denying my feelings. What if everything was all in my head? Was this merely something I clinged to for escape from my unhappiness? Would I feel this way if my husband didn’t drink so much?

I needed time alone back home. I saw him after 3 years that fall. When I did, I couldn’t breathe. My heart raced. Everything I’d denied myself came rushing back: just from literally seeing him. The most wild and long-burning love I’d ever known. In that moment, I knew it was never just in my head. I’d been waiting for years to allow myself to accept that this was who I should be with.

I planned to end things and move back to Florida. But when I returned home, the pain I anticipated leaving would cause outweighed the truth that I had lost the ability to be happy in my relationship. When he implored me to, I told him I would try again. I shoved away the future I hoped for. The words Jordan had once told me rang in my ears.

“When sacrifices cause us deep unhappiness, in the long run, we aren’t even doing the right thing anymore. The sadness will come back around to ruin the original sacrifice. The cycle will continue.”

He promised to stop drinking this time. A year passed. Jordan moved to Atlanta for work. I told him I still couldn’t be with him. I pushed myself to stay away.

“I made a promise,” I said. A hundred social ties still bound me to a marriage I felt trapped in.

“So did I,” he told me. “I told you I’m going always going to be here for you.”

We didn’t talk for another year. I told myself that I had to put my all into focusing on my life in the moment, if I was going to fix things. I didn’t expect a birthday mix that October, but it arrived. It came with a message.

“I tried to move on,” he wrote. “But I always wake up one day, and my feelings pull me right back. The biggest thing I regret is choosing not to remain friends with you. I’d do anything to take that back.”

I knew that if we began to talk again, I wouldn’t be able to ignore my feelings. As long as he was in my life, in any capacity: everything in me pulled me to him closer. I knew I would inevitably have to make a choice. Otherwise, this cycle would continue.

I fantasized about what my life would look like if I could stop letting my fear paralyze me and see the truth for what it was: I’d gotten married too young to someone who had lied about who they were. I’d married someone during a time in which I’d buried my feelings for someone else as an attempt to run away from processing old hurt and emotions in my life. But I felt I was doing right by putting every effort into my marriage to fix it. Was I truly willing to sacrifice everything to end things? I didn’t think so. That’s the nice thing about a holding pattern: all of the possibilities are present, with none of the consequences. There were a lot of consequences. I didn’t think I would be strong enough to bear them.

Nearly another year passed, and my husband promised me it would be okay if he could start drinking again. I never thought to push him to finish AA. My mom always asked me how his meetings were going. I lied and said they were going well. I didn’t know how to properly support someone recovering from addiction. I didn’t realize it was significant that he didn’t finish. I figured it was like counseling: you felt better, so you could stop going. (Later I learned this isn’t necessarily the case either). Sober, he was angry, so it was almost a relief. Then, one beer turned into two drinks. A bottle overnight. It always did. I cleaned drinks hidden behind the nightstand in the morning.

I knew this wasn’t happiness. I might have been Christian, but I had a hard time believing that this was what any God could want for me. I didn’t want to feel like I was losing myself anymore. I didn’t want to feel like a hollow shell struggling to find happiness. I didn’t want to feel like I had to drown myself in half a dozen activities just to stave off depression daily.

But I told myself this was merely my own selfishness talking. If I tried harder, I could find happiness. If I went to church more, I’d stop feeling things I shouldn’t. I ignored the next birthday mix.

In 2020, 15 months since we’d last talked, I suddenly couldn’t get it out of my mind. I decided to listen to the mix on the way home one day. I felt I was in a stable place at the time, and able to listen with impartiality. He’d sent a second mix with the first. “One I’m very fond of,” he’d noted. Titled, ISLY.

ISLY. I still love you.

I listened. The mix devastated me: it felt like every track implored me to see the truth for what it was. I wept in my car as I listened to a track with lyrics that sang,

“I have unfinished business in this life/Not ready to go to the other side/Your immortal lover.”

It made me so depressed. I wanted my heart to do something other than cause me pain. I started getting anxiety attacks. I cried during my commutes for days. I sat in my car once I got to the parking lot of work, listening to the tracks I’d heard in the mix on repeat.

Something was wrong in my life. I’d done everything the right way as much as I could. I had followed all the steps. Church. Counseling when I had doubts, or started to end things again (Even if I went begrudgingly at first). Small group. Friends who encouraged me. Not perfectly. I failed many times. But I truly gave it my all. I prayed. I journaled. I focused and worked hard to love my husband. Years passed. It felt like I tore out my heart to not talk to Jordan, over and over again. My heart felt like it beat at half capacity in the life I continued to live.

I think I had done everything the best right way I could.

And still I couldn’t escape the fact that I loved another man. What do you do when you realize that? Do you hate yourself for years, like I did? Fight it with all of your might? Push it away as desperately as you are able?

I suppose if I could tell you that I finally got my act together - that ceasing all forms of communication, doing counseling, and continuing to tell myself that I was happy fixed things for me - this would truly be a redemptive story. But the fact is, I tried all of that, and it failed. Lines became blurred in my life that I never thought could. I became a person young me would have villainized. I think it was hard for me to see the good in myself for a long time. And maybe the fact that nothing I tried to amend this situation worked made me weak: I’m not sure. But I did learn this, and it’s made me very sympathetic to stories of difficult love: ignoring the heart is something you can only do for so long. Something will give: you’ll have to find a place for the sadness to go. You don’t get to try to decide what the heart feels. I don’t know why that is. But I never could tell mine what to feel for a prolonged time. It never lasted. It always went back to telling its truth.

Eventually, if you cannot rid yourself of these feelings you have to accept that it is all real. Then, you can either choose to continue in darkness, smothering your heart, or step into the light. I’d lived in darkness for a very long time now.

So I wrote him a letter. I hurt so much that it was all I could do. When you hurt, you’ll do anything to make it stop.

I posted it in the Dropbox we’d shared for 8 years, making no grand statements or declarations, simply telling him that it was enough just to have found what we shared in this lifetime: that this gave me happiness when my days got hard.

Truthfully, though, I think I took for granted that Jordan would still be there. I think I knew that, deep down, he’d also never fully shake the very clear fact that whatever we had, we seemed to be made for each other. He knew I felt the same.

In his reply, Jordan told me he’d again woken up and couldn’t shake the feeling that he had to talk to me. He’d found my letter by accident, three weeks after I’d written it.

Just a few weeks after, when I came home and my husband was still drunk from the day before, I finally sunk with the realization that the cycle had merely continued. Pain, dissatisfaction on both ends. Deep down, I believe I had always known that no matter how hard I still tried, this wasn’t right, even if I didn’t want to. My body knew: the depression, anxiety I had developed. We’d lived separately under the same roof for a long time. I had struggled greatly for never letting myself believe that choosing Jordan was the right thing, never truly able to shut out my feelings for him. Instead, I had spent 4 rather lonely years unable to give my husband the wholehearted support he needed for a truly devoted wife. I had distanced us. I had given myself an anxiety disorder. I won’t abscond him: he continued to abuse my trust by spiraling back into addiction. He blamed me for not finishing AA. In the end, he told me that my toxicity drove him to develop a drinking problem, even though it had existed long before me. Two of us were at fault. And almost every night for 4 years, I had questioned if anything I ever did would make me feel satisfied.

Then, the pandemic felt like it had stripped everything from me that I thought was too important to leave behind.

Church. Friends. Travel. Work.

With nothing left to bury my unhappiness in, I took a long walk and then I finally told my husband what I should have said years ago.

“I can’t do it anymore. I hope that you know what your drinking has cost you.”

The week of what would have been our 4th anniversary, he left. I wanted to undo what I had done. I asked him to stay. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I begged him to reconsider. It all felt like a mistake: I didn’t feel the grand sense of freedom I thought I would. I felt pain, and disgust, with myself. Had I flippantly villianized one man to ease my conscious about being in love with another? Was this the greatest mistake of my life?

I told Jordan I needed space. I didn’t know when, or if, I could talk to him again.

Alone, I went to the darkest places imaginable. As I considered going to the hospital for my panic attacks, I sought treatment for my codependency. I went to the counselor I’d gone to for years, who had counseled me through my marriage and now counseled me through divorce. I got a psychiatrist. I still went to church online. I did a lot of talking to God. It took months of healing, months of being alone and learning how to not cry when coming home to an empty home. Months to think about what I wanted, and what the past ten years had meant. I began to see things clearly, very slowly, in the midst of that copacetic summer, I finally found, after all those years, healing.

I texted Jordan, months later. It had been 9 years. I felt as though we had fought a war. We’d tried moving on. I’d pushed him away, multiple times. Back in Macon, all those years ago, Jordan made me a promise that he would always be there for me and would care about me. Even after all the years that passed and all I put him through he never broke that promise.

Finally, it was time to bring the cycle to a close.

So I wrote to him.

“I’m finally healed enough to talk again. Do you want to come over?”

Listen to ISLY here: https://m.mixcloud.com/jordan-mcgee2/isly-mixed-by-mcgee-me/

One Year On My Own

This week marks a massive milestone for me: it has been one year since I began living alone. Looking back, I'm frankly blown away by the speedy passage of time. I hurt so much back then that I thought I didn't even want to live anymore. I have experienced a lot of pain in my life, but nothing compared to what my heart went through during that time. I cried until my eyes went dry. I couldn't eat. And once I was finally stable enough to be alone, I felt like the silence I came home to swallowed me whole, each passage of each hour slowly ticking by, marking an eternity of solitude that lay before me. I felt like a fragile shell, easily broken by any small kink in the day, easily jostled by any bad news, waiting constantly for the other shoe to drop. It was a time of great questioning for me. A year ago, I sat crying on the floor, telling myself that I could still undo things, that things could return to how they were in my life before I chose to walk down this path of ending my marriage. Looking back, I believe I knew what I needed to do, but there was no way for me to fully anticipate or understand the kind of pain that the journey would put me through. It was enough to make me want to stop and rewind. But I am so fortunate that that wasn't what happened. 

We don't always know what we need while it's happening. A year ago, I couldn't tell you that I needed things to happen the way they did. I didn't realize that tearing apart my entire schema of life: confronting all of the pent up guilt, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the anger, even: was pivotal to moving forward in my life. I felt stagnant for many years. It was only this year that I began to feel like a stream from which rocks have been dislodged, allowing the waters to flow freely once more. "I just can't find peace," I thought to myself long time ago. "No matter how hard I try. There are questions I can't silence, and answers I can't bear to face." At the time I experienced my lowest point, I couldn't know that relearning how to seek happiness, appreciate the world around me, lean into my loved ones, was all part of the framework that would build this incredible future that I'm living now. It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning. I sang a song very often during those first few months, as I leaned heavily into John Mark McMillan and Josh Garrels' music during this time to provide me comfort as I processed my pain, for much of the time, alone. 

Farther along we'll know all about it, Farther along we'll understand why. So cheer up my brothers, live in the sunshine. We'll understand this, all by and by. 

As my counselor, who has known me for years and counseled both myself and my ex husband, told me this evening, "You're here because you put in the hard work." And I know that that is true. I have never felt more loved, more supported, or more true to myself than I do now. 

There are a lot of emotions that come with this time. I know that what I write perhaps seems melodramatic, but I had only ever lived alone for about 5 months out of my entire life prior to last year. This year pointed out many glaring facets of myself to me: I had never cultivated a satisfaction for living alone and creating my own space. I wasn't sure how to be happy alone. I relied on people I was in a relationship with to fill up my space. I had to completely rethink how I approached life, how I filled my time, and what brought me peace.

It feels like a lifetime ago, because now - without trying to sugarcoat it - I truly wake up each and every day so grateful for my life. I love my beautiful home. I love its views that overlook the city. I love my plant jungle on the patio. I love the light on Sunday evenings at sunset. The high ceilings, the decor I've painstakingly rearranged and added to for years now (and redone this past year). I wake up now and I am so happy. Truly. It's been the hardest and the best year of my life. 

So... I have a lot of words of advice for anyone struggling with loneliness. Or living alone. For people exiting relationships, or entering new phases. I've lived it, each painful day and week, and it didn't happen all at once but one day the sadness didn't drag me down anymore: I realized I'd risen above it. My hard work had buoyed me upwards. 

Firstly, treat yourself. I get myself fresh flowers weekly. I got a subscription to a monthly box I liked. Those little gifts really lift my spirits. When I cultivate my space and intentionally use my money to spend on something aside from basic necessities - it gives me something to look forward to, and was a much needed bright spot for me.

Secondly, exercise. No, really. I didn't know how badly I needed a regular routine. I got an unlimited subscription at a yoga studio. It has hands down been the best thing I've spent money on this year. The accountability of going to a class - being able to watch my body get stronger and transform - it has been so empowering and satisfying. If you have a hard time motivating yourself to go to the gym, which I do, I highly recommend a subscription to a studio or some other type of gym. It has improved my mental health tenfold. It can be pricey - but for me, it's worth setting aside this money because it's an investment into myself. (Also, if I skip eating out 3-4 times per month, that pays for my classes. So it can definitely pay to shift priorities if you are able).

Thirdly, get outside. This is harder in the winter time. I'm really grateful I went through the darkest times I did in the summer - I always used to hate summer, but this past year it became one of my favorite seasons. I intentionally made trips to the beach. I bought a bike and rode to the park, to the grocery store, just rode. Start a garden. Feel the earth in your hands. Lie underneath the sun and just daydream. I'll admit winter was hard for me because I couldn't do these things as much. I really relied on exercise and visiting friends more during this time. But every sunny day I could get? I made it a point to spend some time outside. 

Fourth, lean into your friends and family. This should be a gimme. But I started weekly calls with my sister. I made time to see friends. It was a huge shift for me, one who is so work-centric. COVID was actually a blessing in that I couldn't work as much as I'm used to. It’s easy to go down the rabbit hole of feeling alone, to get lost alone by yourself. It really helped for me to schedule phone calls, that way I'd stick to doing them - otherwise I'm the kind of person that can sit at home alone and talk to no one, even if I promise I still love you. 

Lastly, I highly recommend planning things to look forward to. I planned frequent weekend trips to see friends. I got to travel a few times this year. I climbed a mountain on a spiritual hike in a rainstorm. We all need something to look forward to, and having those checkpoints helps give you motivation to push through each day. 

I could say a lot of other things - about how that spiritual hike changed my life. About how faith and my church really got me through the hard times, even when we couldn't meet in the middle of a pandemic. I found a quiet spot in my neighborhood by a pond that I loved spending time in. I picked up a new hobby that challenged me (music), and leaned into new books. I started pen pals with people - I loved the excitement of a letter awaiting me in the mail. It's been a lot of self care - but not the froufrou kind. It's been the intentional kind, that I built on and sometimes forced myself to initiate until finally, my mind started realizing I was human again. And you know what? It's rocked. I'm so grateful for this time learning to be happy on my own. It makes me so appreciative of the little things, even more appreciative of the big things, and enriched my life in ways I never realized I needed.

It's so good to be in that place. For all that I felt I had lost last year: I spent a year "alone", but gained more than I could ever imagine.

A Candid Reflection on the Last 5 Years.

In two weeks, one year will have passed since the day my marriage ended. How long ago that seemed, back before I knew the pain and the withdrawals I would go through, before I knew how much I would transform, before I knew that this year was not the eternity of lonely penitence I once thought lied in wait ahead of me. I have to be honest, part of me believed it was all just a test back then. If I did the right things, if I got counseling, wrote the letters, went to church, prayed enough...things could go back to the way they were, reconciliation would happen. I only thought this in the early days, to be clear. Looking back now, I believed this because my codependent brain couldn’t cope with the ending just yet. I needed some sort of reassurance, even just a false one, that things wouldn’t be the way they were. 

For the past year, I have tried to walk a fine line of being both open and being more reserved about what happened. I do believe in respecting other people’s privacy, but at the same time, I also have always believed that it’s important to shed light on your struggles, and on your truth, because it lends strength to others who perhaps have gone through the same thing. I have always tried to walk the route of being more open and candid with my life, even if it doesn’t always shed me in the most beautiful light. I’m a very flawed, divorced, chronically ill 27 year old who has struggled with depression, eating disorders, anxiety, and her share of familial issues for most of my life. I’m not merely a passerby in any of that. I’ve played an active role in the drivers seat, hurting people I love, being too rough on the edges and making mistakes along the way. But I do believe that learning from it (and by extension, processing it through writing and candidness) is helping me continue to grow into the woman I am meant to become. 

So I wanted to talk to you tonight about addiction, about alcohol, because I have spent a very long, long time thinking about it. Years, actually. It has played a center part in my life since 2016, two weeks after I walked down the aisle, when I learned I was married to someone who struggled with this. The paramedics called me one Friday while I was interning at the hospital, still a student. 

“Lacy Mason?” They asked. I answered yes. “We found your husband on the side of the road. He’s injured, and we believe he’s been drinking.”

I felt like a train had hit me, but the most overwhelming feeling was one of confusion. What? How? Why? I had known literally nothing about this until the moment they called. Had I been that much of a fool that I really hadn’t known? Had other people known and not told me? Had I really missed all of the signs? 

I was angry, too. Selfishly, I was. Anger is a first instinct. A human one. And often the thing we feel before we start to take a step back and process things. I missed my best friend’s wedding rehearsal dinner that night as I picked him up from the hospital and let him sleep it off. I lied to everyone and said it was a biking incident, full of shame and denial. Even my clinic instructor who I frantically explained a fake situation to so I could leave and get him. My heart hurt. My head hurt. I felt like I was in a dream.

I think the hardest thing was hardly being able to talk about it. How do you have a conversation with someone who barely even remembers what happened? How do you tell your friends who just helped you live your “happily ever after” mere weeks ago that this has happened? I couldn’t begin to figure out how to start. So I didn’t. 

It was not an isolated incident. Not that summer, not that year. Sometimes months would go in between, sometimes shorter, other times longer. I felt worried when I was gone, worried what I could come back to, worried about the bottles in the kitchen I had yet to get rid of because I didn’t fully understand the gravity of depth of what was happening. I wondered if I had done something wrong. I wondered if I had caused this. 

At 22, mostly I was just confused. I was hurt. I hadn’t seen any behavior like this before, and it seemed to start without warning. Truly, it just began on a day that seemed exactly like every other day. 

I know now after many years that addiction is a difficult thing. It’s not a linear healing process, and that’s something I struggled a great deal with, as I believe I unfairly expected that for a long time. I think as someone who personally has never struggled with this particular battle in life, my lack of experience didn’t equip me to provide the kind of emotional support necessary to either let myself thrive instead of just survive, or help the person struggling through it properly. Nor to recognize the right steps to take to get either of us through it. 

While I recoiled in anger and hurt, I should have extended an olive branch and built a community. I should have set structure and accountability. I should have pushed the 12 steps more. I did try to do my part. I didn’t mention it to friends. He wanted to keep it private. So I did. And I did do everything I could do establish that protective wall of privacy around us, even at the expense of my own well being. Even when I got questions from friends. Where did the entire bottle of whiskey go from the pantry of my friends house that weekend we stayed? As I pulled more into myself, I clung to old bad habits. I didn’t give myself enough insulin. I lost weight. It was to give myself a sense of control, but it was a silent cry for help, too. And when I didn’t think I could take it anymore, I’d try to walk away, and then I’d inevitably return to the cycle, unable to face my fears of loneliness and loss, digging a deeper and deeper well of hurt into not just myself, but both of us. The “flight to health” - the act to push away any of the deeper, residual hurt in order to soothe the bad feelings and return things to normal in the face of a blowup - plagued me for years, as I was unable to break out of my own toxic cycle I created. I became consumed with my own hurt and emotions over everything, demanding more, turning to things I shouldn’t have, and shutting myself off. I built my own walls. And it stunted my own ability to heal, let alone my ability to help support the person I was with. I wish I hadn’t done all of this, but that’s the thing about growth - it often takes the “what not to do” to learn the “what to do.” (If that’s not the case for you, consider me jealous of you.) In the end, all of this left two people unable to move forward and heal. I was angry about the past, my illusions of happiness shattered, and I became a harsh critic because of it. People rarely respond well to this. 

At the same time, I was just young. I went back and forth between feeling I was too harsh and too soft. I have an innate desire to please, and a hard time saying no and telling hard truths. Lacking healthcare or feeling the strain of a single income for a long time, it was hard to prioritize getting the mental help needed for either of us, believing that with enough hard work this could be handled without professional help. When I was pressed to bend the rules, to “allow” a drink, I eventually caved in, on multiple occasions that led to bad outcomes later on. I brought the occasional bottle of wine home. I followed all the wrong steps. 

When I got sad, I tended to pull deeper into myself, instead of reaching out. I think I could have avoided a lot of pitfalls had I talked to someone with similar experience, perhaps, or just reached out to a trusted adviser or confidante more. But I felt shame, and felt I’d betray trust it I did. I wanted very much to preserve the illusion that everything was fine on the outside. 

It was hard processing a lot of this hurt alone, because there were so many things that happened that only I remembered or witnessed. It was hard when those happened and they made you more paranoid: every little thing became more noticeable. The smell of their breath or skin. The cups hidden behind the nightstand. How full was that bottle the night before? A “good night out” put me on edge, just waiting for the other shoe to fall. 

I also think one of the harder things when things finally ended was having it thrown back to me. There was the, “I’ll admit I had a bit of a drinking problem... then,” and the “I struggled so much because you didn’t join Alanon to properly support me.” I still don’t understand how it all started. My once dear friends who told me I was lying and manipulative to ever accuse the person I’d lived with for 5 years of having a problem hurt very deeply. There were the incidents revealed to me even after, that I hadn’t known about. It made me question several years of my life: what version of reality I could actually trust. 

And all of it is just water under the bridge now. But I’ll admit it hurt for a long time, and even when I talk about it to my counselor... I’m shocked at what an emotional reaction it evokes from me. The tiny shakes, the quiver of my voice as I told back tears. The ache in my throat. I wanted to sob. I held it all for a long time. The times I felt alone, the guilt I carried for all I thought I could have done better. And I’ve spent a year letting it go. It feels good, to let the universe play its part now as I have set this part of my life free. I learned, I grew, I changed over the years. I hurt. But I was who I needed to be then, and that helped me become the person I need to be now. It takes strength to move past your mistakes and let them refine you.

I want to say this: you might think you can’t, but you are strong. Whatever you choose, whatever you are facing, you are strong. Looking back on a year... it sits so well with my soul that everything happened as it should have. Could it have been executed better? Yes. But it took strength, nonetheless, to come out of this situation whole. Strength takes sifting through the oftentimes messy weakness to find what lies beneath. 

I want to tell you to trust your heart. I want to tell you that choosing to repeat cycles that only perpetuate your pain in an attempt to sacrifice for someone will inevitably come back to sabotage and ruin the original sacrifice. Because neither of you learn. Whatever that means to you, know that you cannot expect to heal without FULLY confronting pain and hurt. Not partially. Not just laying things aside and not processing how they’ve effected both parties for the sake of preserving the temporary peace. 

The good thing about setting something free is... you can hope for a happy ending from a distance, as though you are reading a fairytale. We should all want what is best for our fellow humans. 

You no longer play an active role, but there are little reminders and whisps of memories you’ll get every so often, and you’ll smile at them and think, “for all of this that happened, I was made better. They too, learned in ways that they needed to. For all of this that happened, I played my part in the universe’s grander scheme. It is no more, but it was good.” These thoughts will pass. The lessons have been learned, the story seen to conclusion. The final page of that chapter turnt. It is here that I wish for peace and goodness, it is in this space that I feel whole and complete: the work I did to heal has made me feel whole again, because I rebuilt myself from the ground up using what I learned. 

The journey, for all its pain and poignant beauty: it was good. 

The COVID Blues

Lately I’ve been down. I feel like I’ve been crumbling under the weight of this pandemic. And I feel guilty saying that, because things could be a lot worse. I have a job. I have healthcare. I have a roof over my head. The boxes of “survival” are all checked. 

I suppose this is indicative of an important distinction for all of us: that there is a great deal of difference between surviving, and thriving. This winter has been long and dark indeed: I have lost some of my favorite residents to Covid, seen others hospitalized, and am feeling the pressing burden of keeping patients, managing budget, and assuring residents of our safety protocols as a rehabilitation director, while brainstorming creative ways to build caseload. The stress gets to me.

In the springtime and the summer, my walks outside gave me life. Picnics in the sun, watching the geese by the pond. Riding my bike to the park and sitting for hours on a blanket outdoors, reading. I didn’t take for granted these moments, because they healed me. But I didn’t realize just how much I depended on them for my well-being. The cold, dark days make it hard to enjoy being outside. 

It is isolating, and I struggle with it. No one tells you about how isolating it feels after divorce. To have made a home with another human being and then learn to grow accustomed to living alone. Even if you are better off for it, the fact is, you will almost surely feel the absence of another human in your space more acutely, and there will be things, even little ones, that you miss, even if you don’t miss the person. I truly have had to work hard to navigate the transition, and doing it in a pandemic made it a great deal harder. Aside from a 5 month stretch between college and undergraduate school, I have never lived alone in my life. Everything I learned that was useful in my previous season of life, I have to unlearn to adapt to my current one. There is a peace about it: I enjoy the space I’ve created, and everything in its place just the way I wanted. I enjoy the too-few leisurely mornings or the quiet evenings with a glass of wine (not too much) and a book, or sitting listening to NPR. But there is an intense loneliness, too, that makes feeding into depression easy. One that might more easily be abated by groups, or church, or dinners with friends, or going out on a Friday - things that aren’t readily available in the current state of the world. 

Don’t get me wrong: I’m so happy with how my life is right now. I feel so blessed, I feel as though my life is just filled to the brim with goodness and abundance, I have so much to live and be happy for. I am truly grateful and satisfied. But in spite of all that, I do still have ups and downs, and I’m sure I’m accurate in saying that many of us are feeling the strain of COVID right now.

I am prone to depression. I weaned myself off of antidepressants late last year. It was a difficult process. I am glad that I went on them last year. I had a difficult time pulling myself out of bed most mornings. It strongly interfered with work and I couldn’t eat. Going off of them was painful. My moods didn’t always feel like my own. I feel much better now. But some days or nights I’m just... down. And it’s hard to get back up again. It’s hard to know if I made the right choice choosing to go without them, but I made the choice I thought was right for me at the time, so I’m comfortable with that. Artists and highly emotional people often struggle with the darker end of the emotional spectrum that can manifest as depression. Where there is intense joy and feeling, is sadness, too. The piper has to be paid, at least so I see it. I can write some beautiful words and feel beautiful things and be moved by the human experience in ways that I feel many of my fellow humans cannot. But so too can I be moved by sadness and negative feelings, compounded by childhood pain, codependency, and a chronic illness. So this s is not to say that depression can’t also be a clinical thing, or simply something that anyone can experience based on circumstances in their lives or their processing. Because that is the case, too. Since I was a child, I was a writer and often a loner, and as a teenager, I was aware of these ups and downs, although I didn’t have a word for them. As an adult, I am glad that I largely know how to manage it. I’m good at coping. I’m good at staying busy. The repetitive and peaceful routine of cleaning. A show I enjoy. Checking on my plants. Yoga. All of these things help. 

But the times they don’t, sometimes, I just get to be sad, and I have to let that process happen, and try again tomorrow. I enjoy the peacefulness this stage of my life has brought. I’m grateful for the freedom. I’m grateful for how much less stressed I am. But I’m also sad being alone, sometimes, because I miss the space around me being filled. I accept that. Perhaps it is simply laziness: I enjoyed the space filled around me because it didn’t hold me accountable for looking inside of myself for internal gratification or fullness. Perhaps it is just simply human. 

Covid feels like a little too much today. I want to be around people. I want the “easy” route of companionship - sitting in a coffee shop, or swing dancing, the casual encounters with familiar strangers that make me feel like a part of something. I miss casual strangers, faces, and social outings. I think one day I’ll look back and I’ll feel glad that this time exposed weak points of mine and crutches I relied on to supplement my own internal sense of happiness. 

But I’ll also rejoice and appreciate every normal moment, once those days come again. 

Otherness.

Carving a path for myself has always been hard. In truth, I’ve always felt like an outsider. Even long before I had an invisible illness that made me feel as though I lived my life inside of a glass box.

I was acutely aware of my own “otherness” even as a child. I was a puzzle piece that never seemed to fit quite right. I would look at myself in the mirror as I grew up, studying the different angles of myself, hoping to glean more insight into who I was. Practicing conversations I imagined I might have with other people. Letting my mind wander with fantasy and whimsy, and even more dangerous - idealism I dared to hope upon. I learned to settle that quickly, my own personal motto becoming, “taper your expectations.” It is too easy to become disappointed as an idealist. We oftentimes learn this the hard way. 

I had an active imagination and a love for writing and art from a young age, but an awful awkwardness around people. Am I the only one who could never even figure out something so simple as what to do with my hands when I talked to people? 

The words of a girl I used to spend time with when I was 8 still ring in my ears, even to this day, on the last phone call we had: 

“Lacy, when we hang out, things are...different. Really different.” 

It took me time, but I realized a large part of my feeling like an outsider was born from my early struggles with anxiety and depression. As many of us artists, feelers, and creators find ourselves struggling with. I think this can be complicated because we both mourn and delight in the things that set us apart. We push ourselves into art to find our great belonging, as our way to try to connect with a world that inherently tells us that our way is the one that doesn’t quite fit. There is a freedom in stopping to say, “Maybe it’s not me that is wrong. Maybe it’s the world. Maybe the reason I feel so different is because I’ve been told that “right” is only one thing. Maybe I don’t have to be like that after all. Maybe I’m like this because I like it here.”

So as I grew older, I learned to step into this otherness more comfortably. To surround myself with people who could see me, and whom I could see. It is no wonder that I often felt drawn to others on the fringe - outsiders, or those on the border, if you will, with whom we all shared a little of this “otherness”, too. Though I tried and tried when I was younger, I came to see that I couldn’t necessarily change myself to be the free-flowing, easygoing person who always fit in. Resilience borne from hardship is a badge most individuals do not want to wear, but is rather forced upon you. Living in a world of lows and highs and oftentimes struggling to find the right balance of in between is difficult, but I learned that it’s okay to embrace this for what it is and seek out balance I n my own way. To listen to my inner self. To change myself to conform to my conditioned version of “right” that the world taught me - I did learn that this was the harder and, nay, more impossible task. I instead had to find my own place. And realize that was okay, even if it meant occasionally feeling alone in a crowded room. 

There are many things that I have learned about myself in the 27 years I have spent alive. 

I know that in order to carve my happiness, I must be a creator. 

I must strive to be true to myself. 

I must feel that I am serving in what I do. 

I must try harder every day to make my heart soft, even if I did not innately learn this. 

I must be okay with my good days and bad days, and be willing to take the steps I need to to listen to what my body and mind is telling me that I need. 

I must be willing to put in the work to be my best self. It is not just steps to an end: it is a life long journey. 

As I get older, I realize perhaps that this sense of otherness is not just me. Perhaps we all feel it. Perhaps we all feel that we live on an island, where we are, at the start, innately lonely. And perhaps we all simply act on this in a different way. Some might find it easy to leave. Some might be content with staying. Many might find that right amount of in between, effortlessly, even. Some might hover in that in between, ever so unsure of how to end up in the right place, afraid of swimming out too deep, unable to get back if we go too far, unable to leave if we never dare to go far enough. 

For me? The island is both hard and too easy to live on. For creatures who hate loneliness, there is a sort of draw to it, too. Like a siren’s song. Living in our own world is what sets us apart. Things feel right, there. The rest of the world is what seems strange to us, not the other way around. 

The longer we stay there, the more that the walls that once held us in seem comforting. I want to remember what these times are like, too. But I don’t want to be here forever. We want to be validated too, you see. We want to find our belonging. Striking the right balance is learning to find your belonging without giving up your true self.

My otherness is something I stride to bridge the gap on, between being true to myself and finding my best belonging. It also beckons. “Do you know what you are here for?” It asks. I think I’d like to find out. I say that I think because that journey can be painful.

Part of my sense of otherness, yes, has been my own personal experiences with pain and my reaction to them. A large part of it I have also, importantly, learned to identify in the last year as a single word: 

Codependency. 

My journey out of codependency has not been easy. It has been a mine pit that I have tried to gnash and claw myself out of, all while the voices of codependency whisper to me not to change. I grow defensive. I do not want to change what has been comfortable for 27 years. So I regularly struggle daily with the same self doubts that always plagued me, only this time, the scene is simply set differently. It is hard to listen to my self doubt so frequently, and in some ways, be helpless to do a thing about it. My need to tether myself to someone or something in order to find deeper meaning is a painful artifact of my childhood, a wound that was left in me by a parent who loved me, but could not allow their own love to flow freely to me. 

Codependency is a lonely place. It is cold, hollow, endless. Because there exists inside of you a hole so deep, that no one thing can ever fill it. Your heart is insatiable. And it tricks you, the clever thing. It takes the things that bring you joy and it morphs them into things that are no longer enough. They are poisoned in your mind, as your mind tells you to loathe them because they are not enough to fix you. Try as they could, they could never be enough. 

That sounds awful, you think. 

It is. It can be. Because it isn’t reality. No one bring can be everything. No one person can be everything. But only you can tell yourself, that.

Recovery is something I’ve learned is not an end state, but rather a practice. Daily I must remind myself. 

“It is enough.” 

“Treasure your abundance.”

“Stop and appreciate.”

“Only you can truly be in charge of your happiness.”

It is important to differentiate this from settling. You have every ability and the tools to be happy, with codependency. But you have to check yourself. Because you are going to question yourself. Constantly. “Do I have enough?”

And you must remember to pause and tell yourself, “Yes, I do.”

I used to think that happiness was a career. So I graduated with a doctorate at 23. And still, I felt like a failure. Still, I felt unsatisfied. An imposter that didn’t belong, but also should have strived for more, pouring and pouring myself into work I found identity in, all while feeling more and more empty, depleted, and lost. 

I used to think that happiness was a man. I painted many to be what I wanted. A white knight. I faulted them for not living up to my impossible standards. It also made me stay in situations when I shouldn’t have. I knew, mere months after my marriage that it was not right for me. Deep inside: I knew. We were not helping each other become our truest selves. I think we were even hastening ourselves further away from who we should have been. My duty bound me there. It also caused me to fester, to simmer, in my anger. Anger that said more about me than about him, even if his addiction was an exacerbation to my negative emotions. The more I simmered, the more I tried to control. Control is not love. Trust is. An absence of trust became centerpoint to years of unhealthy behavior, with bandages placed over rough points to smooth them over, without exposing the deeper wounds to allow them to heal. It is no wonder that my ex-husband eventually left me. I was the one that threw the door open, of course. He simply shut it behind him. I wasn’t happy, and he wasn’t, either. I hated his addiction, but it also made me angry at myself. Because I continued to let myself remain in a situation that violated my boundaries. And he did not feel like he was in a safe place to heal and re-establish his own boundaries, either. Will he ever find healing and recovery? I certainly hope so. But the narrative of my own life no longer depends on what he comes to be. Now, I am learning to confront my sadness, my anger, and my codependency in the narrative of what it says about me: not, “I am feeling all of this because of another person.” I am not. That is merely a variable. My feelings indicate that I still have much work left to do, in my own heart and mind. 

I am finally living in a narrative that is right for me. When I look into the eyes of the man I truly believe has been made for me, I see two people that compliment the other. We watch each other’s blind spots. Neither of us are people who can be controlled. It is hard, too. We disagree often, and butt heads. He pushes me, and I push him. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I am becoming more and more the person that is my true self, because of him. But. It is important still to note that not even my soulmate can fill the emptiness inside of me. Only I can. From a heart that I fill with the grace to give what I might not have ever had. From one that learns to be softer side by side with its developed fortitude. I must remind myself that I am not left wanting more because someone else failed. I am left wanting more because my codependent brain keeps trying to tell me that nothing can ever be enough. And that is not true. So I learn to hold him a little tighter, to treasure every moment with him, but also to learn to be comfortable in my own space. To remember that being alone isn’t always loneliness. It’s also quiet self reflection, and honoring myself. It has its place. Him needing space is not a rejection of me. It is him respecting his boundaries. It is me respecting his. We are a painting made of different colors, making one thing, but each comprised of our different selves. He helps me to get outside of my head when I get into that codependent, depressive, and negative cycle - and I am learning to get better at letting him. It’s an utterly transforming process. As a slow learner, it’s hard. But I am filled with the comfort of knowing that at last: this is where I’m supposed to be. Learning side by side, with him, who I am, who he is, and who we are.  

“What do you want, Lacy?” I want to be happy, of course, I would answer back. But I also have to be honest with myself. If happiness was staring me in the face, would I even know what it looked like? It is hard to accept that happiness is a transient thing. It is not a fixed state. It is an ebb and flow, a journey that I do not simply work towards, but one that I live daily. I learn a little more each moment at a time. 

I hope that we all dare to continue down the River that is the ebb and flow of happiness, that we have the strength to break our cycles, carve our own path, and that we find the self realization and appreciate within in order to celebrate our otherness. We are not all so different, but rather alike, I think. Other or not, we are boundless, capable, free, unable to be labeled. And we are constantly learning what that means. May we never stop. 

Hatsuyume.

Hatsuyume, in Japanese culture, is the first dream of the new year. Traditionally, it is thought that the contents of the dream with foretell the luck of the dreamer in the ensuing year.

On the night of new years this past year, I dreamed I was at a grocery store. I looked up from checking out, and Jordan was standing at the door. We locked eyes. I hadn't seen him or talked to him in years. We said nothing. My dream ended.

I had gone to sleep excited to have my first dream, particularly because of an upcoming trip to Japan planned for that May. You can imagine how perplexed I was that my hatsuyume was a dream about someone who I hadn't spoken with in so long. 

What is perhaps even stranger, is the fact that this dream did, indeed, foretell my year, in the truest way possible. 

This year deserves a summary if any ever did. While it is a marker for the world's history books: it also marks a particularly large and momentous chapter in my own book. I remember the 31st of December, 2019 and how jubilant I felt: I, like so many others, dressed in my best interpretation of the '20's and celebrated a year that I couldn't have yet realized would completely strip me of my then-current self. I had a lot to look forward to: a 3-week trip to Japan, my new job, weddings, Dragon Con, and my then-husband applying to medical school, which would shape the future of our life: would it remain in Atlanta? Or somewhere far off? Part of me mourned the thought of leaving the first place I'd ever truly called my home. The other, couldn't quell an itch of desire for some other adventure in life, something to make me feel like I wasn't just stuck where I was at, which I suppose is common to your mid to late twenties when you're settled and in your career. The old familiar "what's next?" will always come creeping up to visit you and make you ponder where you are at.

I, like every one else, never pictured a pandemic affecting us. I read the news like everyone else. I looked on with concern at the headlines about the virus, but it was something far away that I never considered would affect me. We booked our tickets to Japan, figuring it would all blow over. Then the news many of us here dreaded: the first case in Georgia. It felt solemn. That far-off virus was here now, and I didn't know what it meant. But I quickly learned. $800 worth of gigs cancelled that second week in March. I thought that was bad. But then, they all cancelled. Every single one. My extra income was eliminated in almost 3 days' time. And then, it started happening at work. Patients called to cancel. They were too afraid to come in. There were no new evaluations. Things screeched to a halt, and somehow I had to figure out how to make it work. My hours were cut drastically. I was in charge of building a caseload, and I was new to my job, too: and I had 3 patients left. I was fairly powerless to change it. People were just scared. I drove to Newnan almost every day to help at another building, just to get hours. The coping mechanisms I would normally use to get by were gone. I couldn't spend time with friends. We had to cancel our Japan trip, finally. Weddings were postponed. Church no longer met in person. The gym was closed. The only thing that really kept me going were my daily walks on the beltline and freedom park trail, and even those threatened to close. I was so relieved that they didn't. 

I did worry about our income, but did my best to manage with virtual princess calls here and there. I invested a large portion of money when the stock market took a giant dip, and I stressed about it greatly... but thankfully it seemed to be the right call after several months, despite losing quite a bit of sleep over it. One good thing that came out of it all was that I finally understood how refreshing that having an entire weekend off was. I hadn't had any consecutive weekends of in years due to my tenure as a princess. I realized that much of my anxiety was due to chronic overworking. Truth be told, prior to the pandemic, my anxiety was getting overwhelming. On my lunch breaks, I would shut the door to the clinic and lay on my back on the mat, breathing, eyes closed, willing my anxiety to quell. I tried CBD. I tried lemon balm. It helped a little. But I was still so anxious. Taking the weekends off honestly got rid of a huge amount of my anxiety. And that is something I will carry with me even after this all ends: learning to not overbook myself. Being selective about gigs. Resting. I learned to stay still. It's a surprisingly hard task. 

But as for many of us, the pandemic had its sinister side for me personally. It brought up a great deal of hurt and questioning that I had buried deep inside of me for years. Suddenly, without coping mechanics to quell it, it was right at the forefront. A lot of hurt having to do with my marriage. I had a great deal of insecurity about things: had I gotten married too young? Had I married someone I didn't know? I'm not sure I was too young, because trauma has a way of maturing you, and I've had my share and had to mature more quickly than many of my peers. But I did know that I had married someone I didn't know. I had known that for years. But I didn't want to admit it. We tried, time and time again, to address our issues with counseling. Me: codependency. The hurt from my father. The walls I built. Poor conflict management strategies. Poor communication. And him: alcohol. The thing that had haunted us for years. The one thing I hadn't known about going into our marriage. The one thing that would haver changed everything, had I known about it. I have carried so much guilt over it all for years, and truthfully I hesitate to write about it now, lest I seem like I'm just trying to drag my ex-husband through the mud. He deserves to tell his version of his story, same as I am free to tell my story, too. Because there are different versions. There's the woman who become cold, distant, and angry when she found out. There were the times she picked him up, having gotten a call, and he was a person he wouldn't even remember the next day, and she screamed at him. She was the woman who held it inside and decided to talk to someone else about it while questioning if she should be in that marriage. There was the woman who tried to, sometimes begrudgingly, do counseling at his bequest, insisting she didn't need it when she really did, but wasn't ready to open up yet. The woman who pinned all the blame on him. Who carried her anger and let it make her become someone he hadn't married: waiting for him to slip up. Picking after every trait she disliked. Realizing she'd made a mistake, just 6 months after getting married. But not having the strength to say so. She stayed. It was the Godly thing to do. She had to make it work. She hurt because of that decision to not be honest. To fully confront her pain. To heal. She became resentful. And he felt like he walked on eggshells because of it. 

The result of carrying so much hurt but choosing to hold it in to avoid hurting the person I loved was that I had threatened to end things several times over the years. And then this year, after being stripped of almost everything I knew: it happened for the last time. Except this time, there was no going back. Belongings were packed. Leases were signed. Tears were cried. Arguments ensued. Promises were made, later broken. She told no one, because she didn't truly believe it was the end. But as the long summer stretched by, and then the papers came one day, she finally had to let go. 

It was more painful than I could have imagined. There were days when it first happened, that I could barely will myself out of bed. That's when I realized I needed help. I got a psychiatrist. I bought every book on codependency and healing marriages I could find. I attended counseling steadfastly. I picked up new hobbies, forced myself to push down my walls and let my friends and family help me, despite wanting to ball up and fade, alone, in my condo. I thought the pain was so great that I couldn't make it. I would sit some days with the weight of it all, feeling my heart crush underneath my chest, and hurt me with every beat. I would pray on my hands and knees and cry to God, wiling him to hear my truest confessions and apologies. I thought it was for him, but he couldn't be brought back. 

But I could. 

I look back on this year, and I am so proud. I have grown more in 8 months than I did in the past several years. I broke painful cycles of codependency, and while I still struggle, I am learning to be happy in solitude, and happy with who I am. I still have my bad days. I struggle with inadequacy. I struggle with not being around the person I love 24/7, because the codependency I deal with makes me want to find my meaning in the person I love, and I have to wrestle with myself to not do that. I struggle with loneliness, and waking up in an empty bed. These things linger, and I will likely struggle with them my whole life: but like a chronic illness, I can get better at managing them, and I know I can thrive.

There was happiness in the last 5 and a half years. I discovered all the ways in which I loved my city. I looked out at the vast expanse of Chicago from stories up and explored the streets to my hearts content. A smile a mile wide spread across my face all the times I got to dance. I hiked mountains in Colombia, and rang in New Years atop a belltower in Prague. I listened I Wish I Was the Moon played on guitar more times than I could count and felt it resonate in my heart. The wind in our hair atop the lighthouse. The make-up birthday hike. Slow dances to La Vie en Rose. He was a good person. There were good times. There were bad ones. He did flawed things at times. I did flawed things at times. I did not feel like a good person, much of the time. There was great sadness in the last 5 and a half years. The pain of watching the person you love lose themselves to something when they can't entirely help it, and having been taken my surprise by it, is immeasurable. I felt my heart die and resurrect itself again over many times, trying to struggle with my feelings over it, and ultimately it was our undoing. Too great for me to bear, and too great for him to continue with me. It will be okay. Sometimes, forever doesn't mean forever. Sometimes, it's a lifetime in a few years: the birth, life, and death of a great love, teaching us its lessons and pushing us onwards to continue in another life when its time has come to end. I see now that this was how it was meant to be. I see now, in many ways, that this needed to happen, to teach me what I needed to learn. And so I am grateful.

There is happiness to come. Jordan has been my truest friend for almost 10 years: the man I could never forget, no matter where life took us, in its twists and turns and separate directions. His counsel has rang true on far more than one occasion, and I knew that if I ever needed help, he would always be there for me, in spite of how my choices impacted him. After everything happened this year, and we reconnected, it felt like the most natural thing in the world that we should be together. It felt as though, perhaps, it was always supposed to be this way. But I had had to find myself first. He was still there at the end of that road, after our paths had diverged, and finally when they came back together. And that in and of itself is a miraculous thing.

Tonight I take the last of my antidepressants, which I have been weaning myself off of this month. It is symbolic for me. It has not been an easy month, no longer having that cushion to dull the sometimes difficult to bear highs and lows. I did not even mean to time it to the end of the year, but I believe that it is rather fitting that I should close out 2020 by finishing the last of them. I have felt more fragile this month than I have in past months this year. But this year has made me strong, and I know that I will be okay. It's time to be who this year has made me. It's time to take all my lessons I have learned, and move forward. 

I am ready.

And my dreams in this new year? I will listen to them. They appear to hold some truth, after all. 

Coping with My Divorce.

 I got divorced.

I never saw myself doing this. I remember a walk I had had, one Autumn day when I was 15. Back before I knew anything about the world or what my life would be or who I would grow to become. I just knew that I was hurting. The family I had known my whole life was falling apart. The fragile walls of my life, fragments and pieces of adulthood that I was only starting to assemble, were cracking in place as I experienced my own existential crisis created by the brokenness that I was only a bystander to. There was a lot of fighting. I used to take a walk every day, because it kept me from slipping too deep into the depression I had begun to develop an intimate relationship with, even at that young age. I breathed the humid air, birds calling, spanish moss waving lazily in the tree limbs above my head. The black hammock. My home, a lifetime ago, tucked away deep in Florida. I think of the roads and I can't even remember where they all go now. I used to know them by heart. Dotted with citrus groves that gave the most heavenly smell come springtime. Ditches dug deep on the sides of the road, the creek running through, runoff for the rain come hurricane season. Dusty dirt roads scattered behind unobtrusive road signs. 

I knew then that when I grew up, I wanted a family of my own, one that could never be taken from me, and I never wanted to get divorced. I wanted a life free from the brokenness I experienced then and there, the brokenness that, while certainly no party's fault for causing, I carried with me into my own adult life. I swore to that young girl that I would create this life for myself. I longed for this reality, so deeply that I could feel my heart ache for it, before I had even learned a thing about love. I never wanted to grow up to feel as broken as I did then.

The day that I became a bride, I recalled this memory. My heart was full of joy deeper than I had ever known. I was creating my own togetherness. Together, we would vanquish the brokenness I had spent my life fearing. My deepest fear was being alone, after all. I was young, but my heart was earnest as I set out on this journey. "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same," I quoted from Wuthering Heights, as I spoke my vows. My soul had found its home, I had felt. I did not know that it would be temporary as I stood there, my heart racing, cheeks flushed in my ivory gown, my mind full of dreams. How could I have? 

And yet, here I am, 11 years after that walk amongst the orange groves, facing the same brokenness again. Brokenness of my own now. I am no bystander, anymore. 

May saw the darkest and most difficult day of my life, from my now ex-husband leaving, to him texting me not to contact him with the exception of divorce proceedings, without prior discussion of going through with a divorce since he left. I want to provide full disclosure lest someone state that I am playing the victim: I asked him to leave, initially. There are triggers we had built up that I found more difficult than I could have ever imagined overcoming. And then, after, I backtracked. I felt deeply that I had made a mistake, and I wanted to right it. Even if it took separation, even if it took time. I determined to reconcile, and determined that I did not want this. My point for saying that is, I am not an innocent bystander in this, regardless of my intentions in the end. 

But I did seek to reconcile and correct my actions. With every fervent action my heart could muster. Counseling. Marriage books, I read and ones I mailed to him. Fervent letters and apologies. Heartfelt prayers and tears to God. A small book I wrote, even. I wanted so desperately to manifest this reality, to face our heart and to truly heal. My heart was ready now. I don't think it had been before. I had had so far to go. But you should have done it 4 years ago, you told me. After you saw how much I hurt. That’s great that you’ve made progress. But you should have done it four years ago. It was never my job to fix you, and I never could have. There’s always been a darkness in your heart. That’s what you told me. I’d helped you through your darkness, too. But in the end you painted me as the broken girl. You chalked your issues up to growing pains. To me. Even though they happened before I ever knew about them. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. And I believed you. That I was the broken one. Unworthy of a chance after I’d finally had the push I needed to heal. I wish I had done it sooner too, I do. I guess I can’t help that I wasn’t ready. I needed the pain of the way I lost you to fully be willing to look in the mirror. I was hoping you would have seen how earnestly I changed after I lost you, and that you would be willing to have a true heart to heart, one that healed us. I believe we could have done it. If nothing else...that you could merely look me in the eyes and tell me divorce was what you wanted. But you could not even do that. 

I made so many strides in my life during that long summer, dog days that stretched on lazily, the world seeming to spin so slow in this mid-COVID phase. I spent as much time in the sunshine and outdoors as I could. I talked only to a select few close friends, deciding that I needed time for my heart to heal, needed time to teach myself that I didn't need someone else to make me happy, like my codependency had always told me that I did. I learned to care for myself: really care. Not just work, and eat, and sleep. Pursue my passions again. Cherish my heart. I read books. Dozens of them. I tended my garden. I explored new recipes. I poured out my heart in counseling. I wrote endless letters: to dad, to mom, to exes, to him. Facing hurt, confronting hurt, owning the hurt I had dealt, making connections between the relationships I had had, their trauma, and how it carried over into the relationships I had now. It was hard work. But it was rewarding work. As time passed, I opened up, bit by bit. My heart became ready. I widened my circle. I pursued new outlets: yoga. Developing new friendships. Learning to set boundaries with work and commitments. I am a work in progress. But like a school child, I taught myself things, slowly, and I learned. I changed. It was rewarding.

I was excited. I wanted to share the work that I had done with him, truly. I had hoped that this would heal us: two people willing to come to the table and truly own it all. In the end, it did not matter. The apology letter intended to own my hurt was met with a letter that never arrived, somehow getting lost in the mail. Perhaps that was fate. The books went unread. I, of course, cannot judge anyone for their decisions. We all make the ones we deem feel best for us.

So in spite of this, I did not get the conversation I was hoping for. Not as though these actions earned me that. We cannot necessarily earn the feelings of others. I received an email with divorce papers attached. I got them while I was treating a patient, one day, months later. I was not expecting them. I looked at the email, took a big gulp, and I kept a straight face as I finished the treatment session with my patient. You have done all that you can. Now, this is what you must do, I told myself.  

And then I took an hour long lunch and I cried. Needs to be signed by this week, he said. As soon as tomorrow. I was sent reeling again: it feels different when it is final. When it is real. But I had done enough healing the past several months to know that I had to carry on. Even though it broke me. I knew that I had to know, had to tell myself, that I had the strength to do so. So I did. I met and I signed the papers a week later. I knew then that it was finally time to extinguish the hope, extinguish the effort, extinguish the fighting for what we had built. So much of me did not want to. I did not know how to finally stop trying. But I did. This was, finally, the end of our story. A hot August day, mid-pandemic. The world had felt as though it had stopped spinning this year, and so too, had my heart for a while, so too, had we stopped spinning. I recalled our first dance. La Vie en Rose. 

Hold me close and hold me fast

The magic spell you cast

This is la vie en rose

When you kiss me, Heaven sighs

And though I close my eyes

I see la vie en rose

When you press me to your heart

And in a world apart

A world where roses bloom

And when you speak

Angels sing from above

Every day words

Seems to turn into love songs

Give your heart and soul to me

And life will always be

La Vie en Rose

Give your heart and soul to me
Give your heart and soul to me

And life will always be
La vie en rose

 I signed, not even looking at the scribble I placed on each page, stone faced. I said nothing. I walked back to my car. I looked at him. "This is what you wanted, in the end. Not me. Don't forget that. Goodbye."  

As I was forced still to reckon with the now all-too familiar innumerable pain and the process of healing, I asked myself:

How do you cope with it? How do you move on? How do you reconcile with yourself after promising forever to someone? How do you heal from the brokenness? I was tired. My whole life had felt like brokenness, to be honest. Broken family. Broken dad. Broken body. A life spent craving emotional support that I never could seem to get. Even the ones that say they'd never leave, even him, the one that vowed never to - well, he did, too. I did. We did. We both failed each other. My mom, of course, did her best with our family growing up. It wasn't her fault I chose to carry the pain of my childhood and adolescent years in the way I did. But I also couldn’t help it. After it all happened, when he left, my heart was left with so many questions, and I was reeling.

It was hard to not feel bitter. At COVID - I didn't even get to see his full face one last time, half covered by a mask. I did not get the satisfaction of an in person court date, even, but a Zoom call instead. 5 minutes. COVID was the fuel on the fire that set these events into motion, as I watched COVID strip away every coping mechanism, every distraction, that I possessed. How then could I have dealt with the triggers? We each had our addictions, after all. Mine was loving another: codependency. I needed to better love myself. Stop relying on someone to validate me. His was hard to overcome, too. So very hard. I watched him struggle for years. My heart hurt so badly, I guess because I hadn’t know about it before we married. And as a student, later as a young adult, I suppose I wasn’t fully equipped to handle it, didn’t know the best way to help, didn’t know how to not be so angry. Perhaps I should have done it differently. Perhaps I should have been better. Perhaps I could have done more. Perhaps, perhaps. Would life had been different, perhaps? Perhaps?

We can't think that way, once it has all settled. Learning to cope, to heal, and to rebuild is hard after divorce. Doing it in the midst of a global pandemic when the world has already stopped...as a codependent human being... is harder than you could imagine. And learning to as a person of faith is especially hard. You are hardwired to try, to try, to keep trying. To seek true, Godlike healing. Even if you made a mistake. If you heart desires true repentance and change, how do you not pursue it any longer? How do you accept that sometimes that's not enough, and that the lessons you learned that now guide the things you do... still fall short? It is hard, when you feel compelled to do all that you can. This makes stopping feel like the hardest thing. You feel angry and betrayed, almost. God, why did you want it this way? Is it because something is wrong with me after all? Did I not follow your guidance enough? Is it a punishment? I know that I deserve it. So many questions run through your mind, aimed at God. Confusion is one of them at the forefront.

It was all hard. When I truly started to heal, to get over things, I think I realized that the hardest thing for me was letting go of my immense guilt, to start with. I can guarantee you that nobody that gets married pictures themselves getting divorced. I truly believe that we enter into marriage with the very best of intentions. It was hard not to beat myself up over every single memory, every moment, every argument, every word once said. What could I have done differently? Could I have been more supportive? What if I hadn't said that one thing? If I had changed just a little bit, could it have still worked? I think it's important to realize that we cannot put all of that burden on ourselves. The point of my apology letter had been to fully own what I had done and accept the hurt I had dealt when I mailed it to him. Not gripe about what had been done wrong to me. That wasn’t the point. Because accepting what you have done is so important. And it's hard to get to the point where you are ready to do that. I get that. Especially if you feel like you've made apology after apology before things truly went bad. It's hard to come back to the table and be willing to once again take a hard and comprehensive look, and really dig deep and accept that you did the things you did to hurt the one you love. I acknowledge too that addiction is a hard thing. There is hurt and there are mistakes made on both sides. 

I coped with it bit by bit, him leaving. I denied it at first. The only thing that kept me going was the small hope that we could start over and fix things. And then after that hope was extinguished, I still hoped. I hoped every day. I didn't sleep on the right side of the bed, because it was once yours. The steps I took to healing were for you. The books I read. My counseling sessions. I knew we would not go through with it. We would have the conversation that would heal us. But by the time I realized, and you made it clear, that we wouldn't, I had started to realize and prepare for the likelihood that we wouldn't. By then I had learned to relish in the life I was living. To awaken with joy. To let the sun warm my soul. To hike by myself. I let the breeze wash my tears away. I let my strength fortify my heart. I let my prayers soften it. 

This experience was also hard for me because of a complicated relationship with my father. As many of you know, I haven't spoken with my father since... the day before I got married. Which was inexplicably a painful experience, however, it was lessened by the concept of creating a life with a man I loved and trusted and had chosen. A transition, of sorts. From who I was and left behind to who I wanted to be. My complicated relationship with my father and my side of that family is also what led me now to the decision to keep my last name as Mason. I do not have any ties to Lacy Ball anymore - that girl no longer exists, and never will. I made that decision the day I stopped talking to my dad. I do not regret that decision. But it is hard, because I carry a great deal of hurt, a great deal of confusion in this world about where I belong and where it is safe to place my roots. You feel a bit of a floater sometimes, when you don't have that figure to always run to when things go wrong. I have felt this way for a long while, because of my relationship with my father. Much of the hurt comes from how unworthy it makes you feel: that the one person on this earth that should truly love you unconditionally, does not. You go through life knowing this isn't true, but still carrying in your heart the feeling that you aren't and will never be quite good enough, that you were born with something wrong with you, something unlovable in you. No matter what people say to the contrary, you hold this feeling still, even just a tiny bit, and it lurks there in your heart and in the back of your mind. This is a pain I have had to spend a great deal of time reckoning with, and it has tapped into my old familiar fear of being alone. Am I alone? The answer is, of course not. This year has shown me what a wonderful support system I have. I can't tell you how much love, how much goodness and kindness people have shown to me whether they knew what I was going through or not. But there is always a part of your child heart that will tell you otherwise when you have experienced hurt from a parent, I will tell you that. And a part of you that resigns when it is affirmed: here we go again. Everything I thought was right. I really am too broken to be wanted. This is just the hand that life has dealt me.

The pain was so bad that I wanted to die. Truly. I thought back on all of the things that brought you and I here. Was it the day of the eclipse? I couldn't go to swing dancing for months afterwards, and face the people there. It was my fault: I didn't give up enough. Didn't show my support enough. Put you in unfair situations. But then, every time we went somewhere... that was what it became about. It was about how much more fun you'd have, if only. That killed me: feeling I should have done more, you affirming I should have done more. I poured my heart and soul into trying to carry myself through it all, and to carry you too. I know I oftentimes failed. I could have done so much differently. It wasn't just your burden to bear, you see. 

It was mine too.

I think of the fond memories. The first concert with Jared&Amber. You looked at me as they sang the words. I want to die, from loving you too much. 

The first time you played David Bazan in the car. His breakup album to Christianity. Prolific. We went hiking for your belated birthday. I was determined to give you a good birthday, since you hadn't celebrated earlier that year. 

The day we got engaged we went back to my home and we jumped into the pool with both our clothes on, laughing, and then ran upstairs to my room and collapsed, laughing, onto the bed, as we called your mom and gushed about how happy we were. Two weeks was all it had taken, to decide we had wanted to be with each other always. Our first kiss, after the secret show at 1 am at Smith's Old Bar I'd told you about. I'd had two dragon milk stouts and my head was spinny, but you took care of me. 

Our anniversary trip to New Orleans. There was a jazz band in the street, and I begged you to dance with me, and we twirled across the cobblestone, my purse flying, sweating in the humid area.

The night in Chicago we got lost and found that old Jazz bar. We were one of the only ones dancing, and the crowd clapped.

Now you treat me worse than a stranger.

I wanted to die from loving you too much. That was always my intent, my heart's desire. But I cannot. I cannot anymore, and you asked me not to, anyways. That makes sense.
I must go on. Now, I go on without you. Is it for the best? I think so. There is a life that calls to me, a life I still have yet to live. You are so young, after all, they tell me. You'll find someone else. Ten years later. I can't help but think that... maybe all of this... worked the way it was supposed to. Even if I don't understand why God wanted it this way. Maybe he didn't, and we just did that, because we're human and we're sinners and we're flawed and bad at listening to him. 

I wasn't ready, not totally, for it to end. But bit by bit, in the quiet spaces, through the subtle shifts, I became as ready as I could be.

Why am I sharing this? A simple reason, really. It is because of my desire and commitment to myself to face my vulnerability head on. My vulnerability is something I have reckoned with every since my diagnosis of Type 1, after all. Why? Because there's something poignant about facing your reality. A freedom you give to yourself. You take control of your narrative. You own your truth. And I relish in it, as hard as vulnerability can be. I often find that it lends courage to those who are on their own path to reconciling with their own vulnerability. And if I can be a source of strength to any, I consider this openness worth it. 

The news at the end of it all, is this:

I did find the healing I was searching for. I found the healing and the hope that I needed. I think that a lot of people think that this means that you no longer get sad, or morose, or depressed, or angry, or melancholy. This isn't true. I feel all of these things, from time to time. Hurt and heartbreak is a funny thing. It becomes part of us, sinking into our patchwork quilt hearts, growing us and teaching us its painful and indelible lessons. It stays with us, oftentimes a silent figure in the background of our lives, that shapes us as we live onwards. It does not fade. We simply grow with it. And that is what makes us stronger, and makes hurt beautiful, in the odd way of looking at it like a prism. I am stronger now, far stronger than I ever knew that I could be. My heart is still full of love for the man I no longer call my husband, but my heart knows that this love cannot remain the same as it was. I stride forward now, facing this world with hope and a heart open and full of love. As it turns out, I did create togetherness. 

I just had to go through a great deal of pain to realize that I didn't need another human to do that. I needed to breathe. I needed to trust in the process. I needed to learn how to wake up in the morning with a heart full of joy, and smile at my blessings. I needed to relish in the love and support of the relationships I have built around me my whole life. Trust God a great deal more. Forgive myself. I needed to let my hurt shape my heart into a stronger woman, so that it could finally take the back seat.

To realize the indelible truth that is paramount to living the life God has intended for me:

Yes, I have been broken more times than I can count. 

And yet still I am whole.