Living again after emotional loss (Plan B)

I spent the first 25 years of my life planning. What I will wear tomorrow. When I will have my next child. Where my next job will be. How much money I will make. Where I will go to college. Where I will go to graduate school. Nothing was left to chance. Everything was thought about and brought in through sheer willpower, determination and hard work.

One late autumn day, several years ago, a hole in the ceiling of my beautiful home opened and let a cold wind in. All my plans, hopes, and dreams as I knew them flew out that hole as I watched helpless, for the first time in my life. I was very, very scared.

My soulmate/the love of my life/my best friend/my partner of 15 years/my husband of 10 years/the person I loved and trusted most in this world "let me know" that he had been having an affair for years.

Betrayal isn’t as clean and cut and dried as it appears on Lifetime movies and chick flicks. You don’t cry for a weekend, eat ice cream and then met a new fabulous guy that same weekend. It hurts. It really hurts. It is extremely hard to put in words and a kind of pain that I have never felt before. It’s not a void easily filled by another person, nor should it be. When you love and trust deeply and you discover that every intimate thought, feeling, touch, discussion you’ve shared with your husband was shared with another woman, it's unthinkable. Devastating.

As unconventional and liberated as I am, I was a completely loyal wife. Never looked at another man, never thought about another man because the tall, smart, funny, handsome man I had at home was the man for me. No one else compared. I spent all of the years with him up until the point of full disclosure happy and very much in love. Was it perfect? No. Was it worth fighting for? Yes. I will not say I was miserable the whole time or I married the wrong man. None of that holds true for me. That is what people tend to think from the outside when a marriage fails.

I remember thinking...How could this happen to me? I was loyal, loving, hardworking, energetic and in many ways, his cheerleader. I had waited until I was 31 to get married after living with him for five years and had sown all of my wild oats (every single one, believe me and some of them two and three times). I had done everything right. Really, how could this happen to me? I didn’t PLAN for this. I plan for everything and I had no backup plan. I felt lost.

Within a month, he was gone and I was left with my two very confused children and a very expensive home.

What jolted me finally was my son standing over me saying, “Mommy, can you please stop crying TOMORROW?” It was as if he was giving me one more day to have a pity party but he fully expected me to pull myself together and he was giving me until the next day.

This is when Plan B kicked in. When the sadness and depression wane, the old joy started creeping in.

 I:

-dug up all my books on Buddhism and spirituality from their special box in the basement and started reading them again

-surrounded myself with joyful pictures of the children everywhere

-painted the interior of the house the happiest, boldest colors (we are talking tangerine, bright yellow, red)

-got back into therapy

-joined the gym

-thought about how I contributed to the demise of the relationship

-ensured my children constantly that we would be OK

-realized that this was not the worse thing that could happen to a person; death of a child, sickness, etc were much worse

I DID NOT:

-throw myself into the first available man

-stop being who I am

-behave in inappropriate ways

-go out and leave my kids with a babysitter while I tried to recapture my lost youth

After a while, I was happy again. There were many things tried since that time (he moved back into the house, he left again, he moved back in, marriage counseling, etc).There are flashbacks from this time that still haunt me and there are times I think I will never love that way again nor do I want to, but then there are times when I know I can love more and will again. When I am ready. I still believe in love.

Since I am almost out of the woods emotionally, studying Chinese, preparing to go back to graduate school next year, happily working, taking all kinds of spiritual classes, walking daily, hiking and just LIVING, I thought it was time to write this blog entry. Perhaps it will help someone else who is afraid to tell their truth or speak about their sadness. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. It has taken me a long time to get to this point.

Would I do it all again? Absolutely. Everything you go through creates who you become. This was all supposed to happen, I believe and my gorgeous, smart, funny, engaged, joyful, loving children were supposed to be born and I was meant to be their mother. I could not have done that without their father. God bless my Griffin Ty and my Pyper Roan.

A few special thank yous:

-to the friend who called me from China even though it was crazy-expensive to ensure I was okay
-to the friend who came right by my side and slept in my bed next to me for support
-to the friend who sent me books on how to cope from Amazon
-to the friend who banged on my door when I wouldn't answer, brought me coffee and dragged me to the gym
-to the friend who brought me a Valentine on Valentine's Day because "everyone should have a Valentine"
-and most of all, to my mother, my angel, I could not have made it through this without you.

So what do you do when your life as you knew it is over and all your dreams are gone?

It's simple; you dream new dreams and you life happily ever after.