No More Sweeping! (except if your kitchen really needs it)

My dear strong friends,

Thank you for reading.  Thank you for coming on this journey with me.  THANK YOU!! A friend commented on my last blog entry through Facebook. She left me deep in thought.  I'm so thankful for her acknowledgment that this is a heartbreaking story.  I'm grateful for her.  I thought about that all day yesterday.  And so I share with you this, before I continue with my story:

This IS truly a heartbreaking story.  I have to be honest.  By sharing my story with you, I have felt emotions that I had no idea I would feel.  I have felt weak.  Sapped of strength.  Fear of sharing.  Exhausted.  Sick to my stomach.  Something that I've kept hidden for so long is now exposed.  I kind of feel like I'm walking around naked.  In a dark room.  With a spotlight on my heart.  And I realized why yesterday.....because Early Twenties Strong Girl, Early Twenties Ugly Girl and everything up until now hasn't healed.  I'm healing, friends!!!! By confronting the woman of my past, I'm rawly gaining strength I didn't know that I needed!  By feeling naked, scared, weak, exhausted, raw.....I'm confronting that girl and dealing with it.  A few days ago, my goal was to reach out to my silently suffering friends.  That goal remains as #1, but I had no idea that I would be healing my Past Self.  I thought that was what my counseling sessions were for.  Sure, I'm a Survivor with Strength.  But my strength is manifesting itself and growing stronger.  WOW.  Thank you! Thank you Facebook Commenter Friend.   Early Twenties Strong Ugly Girl has joined this journey.

PS: I don't have a split personality.  Promise.

I continue with my story.........

So here I was.  Lumpy rug and all.  Sweeping everything under that carpet because I didn't want to deal with it and I was too scared to deal with it.  So I swept.  I became a very good sweeper.  Hurrying to sweep before anyone could see the real life I was living.  Plastering on that happy face and going out in public with it.  All the while holding back tears.  And determined to find gladness in any area of my life and focus on that.  That seemed to be a pretty good coping mechanism for me.  The anger continued.  And let me clarify something.  It wasn't all of the time.  It came in cycles, what I later learned as the Abuse Cycle.  Look it up, friends.  See if that relates to any area of your life.  Here is a picture of the Cycle.  Is this familiar to any of you?

I could have sat myself down and drew the same exact picture before I knew this even existed.  So we see that it doesn't happen on a daily basis.  I always thought that it did.  That's why I didn't even think that I was being abused. But this is so true.  I never could predict his behavior.  Sometimes this cycle would go for a week.  Sometimes a few days.  Unpredictable.

Like I say, I can't remember much of what he got mad at me about but I remember how I felt.  At one point in our lives, we wanted to start running together.  We thought that would be good and healthy for us and get us into shape.  I was enjoying running and being outdoors and I thought it would be good to run with him.  One particular day, we started jogging and warming up.  As we rounded a corner, once again, he got mad at me about something.  He took off down the street, running yards ahead of me, leaving me in his dust....literally.  The tears ran freely down my cheeks as I watched his angry body ahead of me, proving his point that he was so mad at me that he wouldn't even run by my side and deal with the problem.  He left me in his dust to make me feel bad and figure it out myself.  So I did.  I swept it under that lumpy carpet.

Time moved on.  I plugged away at being a mom, finding happiness wherever I could cling and just "settling" with the life I was now living.  There came a time when my husband decided he wanted to finish school, and get a "real" job.  So he crammed his last classes into one semester, graduated and found a job out of state, in a place we had never heard of or been to.  It seemed like a new adventure. A fresh start!  Maybe getting out of the town he knew best would change his anger.  I was excited.  During this preparation and excitement, I had Baby #3.  Because that's what you do when you're hurting and not resolving your deep down issues, right? :) My little girl was born so sick.  For a few hours, we weren't sure she was going to make it or not.  But she's a fighter and she made it! She spent a couple of weeks in the NICU where many blessings and tender mercies ensued.  Doctors, nurses and angels watched over my little one.  This was an amazing time in my life.  I kind of "forgot" about my pain and watched miracles happen to my little miracle baby.  A few months later, we packed up, moved to a random place, not knowing a soul, except for our realtor.  We moved into a house that we couldn't afford, but I loved it.  I was hesitant to buy it, for fear that we couldn't afford it, but my husband assured that we could, as long as I controlled my spending and we live on a tight budget.  Oh, how I loved that house.  Some of the best and worst memories were made there.  I will get into those later.  Because that's when I started remember things.  I remember that the first week we were there, my husband slumped into one of his greatest depressions I can remember.  One day, he just laid on the empty family room rug, unlumpy and new. But he was sad.  Not functioning.  Didn't want to be there.  Missed his family and what he knew best.  I became the cheerleader that day.  I promised him that we could find happiness! We could make a life of our own, being on our own.  That we could spread our wings and fly! I told him that we could just try it out for a year.  If it didn't work, then we could always move back.  But just try.

Who knew that moving to this strange new place would be the beginning of the end of my marriage? I was now Early Thirties Hopeful Girl.  Leaving the problems behind, without dealing with them, but considering this my fresh new start? Taking life by the handles.

After all, if my daughter could fight for her life, couldn't I?

Here's my tip today, friends.  Just let your feelings surface.  Don't bury them anymore.  Find someone to talk to.  Write down all of your feelings.  Go on a run (maybe not with your spouse, if he/she is anything like mine....ha!) Do something therapeutic for YOU.  Because it's real.  And it's heartbreaking.  But it can be so healing so you can gain the strength you need to face the things that you need to face.  You can do it.  I have complete faith in you and so does God.  No more silence or sweeping or pillow wetting.  That kind of sounded like bed wetting....but you know what I mean. ;)

YOU are your own Super Hero.

Strengthly yours,

aMOMynous