I have learned...

3. That things DO get better with time. Time does not heal all. Healing involves hard work and a conscious dedication to become healthy again. But healing requires time. One cannot sit down and say, "Okay, I have a half an hour. Ready, go!" The healing process insists on the passage of time to fade away the grief that one feels in the loss of anything, a marriage, a friend, a death, anything.

In the first few days, really in the first two weeks of the divorce I felt as if nothing will ever get better. That life would always feel this way. That I would forevermore wake up crying, and fall asleep crying. That I would view the world through a fog and never feel any deep feelings again.

But as the days wore on, and eventually turned into weeks, the fog began to lift. Not all at once, sometimes I would get peeks here and there. but it was enough to give me hope. I wrote an email to a friend of mine who had gone through a divorce some years back and asked her, "Does the crying ever stop?!?" I was worried I might burst into tears at any given moment for the rest of my life, because I saw no sign of that slowing down. She replied that yes, it did stop and I would realize one day that I had not cried a tear. She was right, I did have that moment. And they grew more and more frequent.

I can still vividly remember the feelings I had when I heard those words, "I want a divorce." It felt as though a knife had torn right through my heart, down through all the other organs in my body. The aching in my chest proved it. My heart pounded as though it was struggling to move. My head swam as though it was not receiving enough blood. These metaphors are not always as far-fetched as some may think. I imagine the pain is similar.

I hear people referring to "mending a broken heart" and I imagine it very much the same. layers and layers of scar tissue have to be put in place to mend a wound. Layers and layers of feelings had to be put in place to mend my broken love. The grieving process adds those layers without fail. Denial and isolation. There were days I laid in bed and did nothing but cry. I leaked and bled out all the emotions held in from my marriage. They soaked in to my sheets. Once I was done, there was this empty void, waiting to be filled  - and I got to choose what to fill it with. A layer of scar tissue in place, closing the chapter where I believed I was married. Accepting that I was now on my own. Anger. how could he? I still flirt with this phase, I do not like to be angry, those feelings make me feel ugly and dirty. I avoided them for a long time. But with that anger came healing. "how could he spend five years not loving me, pretending, lying every time he said he did?" Add a layer of scar tissue. With every stage came more and more of these layers of scar tissue. The more tissue covering that wound, the less likely that those miserable feelings can leak out. Just as wounds can become infected, I have had my setbacks for sure. But each time I am becoming more skilled at placing that tissue over the gaping hole, and each time that hole is smaller and smaller.

It just takes time, and with the right tools I can recover from anything.