Leave a 3 decades long marriage to the only person who ever knew everything about you, but forgot you were there while he got on with his life
Meet and fall in love with another, heart first, sight unseen, and for whom there was no question that he was my future and I his
Make plans together for that future
Share every detail of yourselves and your lives with each other
Become THAT vulnerable
Learn too late that you love too much, yet are not enough at the same time, and figuratively get left at the altar
Wonder why you are not worth loving, while you fall apart, feeling in your heart, it must be true…for the old one forgot you and the new one didn’t want you
However, be asked to return to that 3 decades long marriage to that one person who knew all along you didn’t belong anywhere but with him, no questions asked
Spend months trying to come to terms with being tossed out of one heart and not understanding why
And allowed back into another and not quite trusting why, but feeling grateful and wondering if that feeling is justified
Working to keep a friendship alive while the question still burns “where did the future go when I wasn’t looking?”
Working to keep a marriage honest and true, yet at the same time, struggle with the two questions “how can he still and how come he can’t” love me?
Helping a husband find a new path in life
And willingly so
While feeling the ghost of pain as the other follows another without you
Unwillingly so
Clearing your life of all material possessions because it’s all become too much
Watching your life put into boxes and carted off like box lots to auction
Standing in an empty shell that once held a family’s heart
Heading into the unknown in the second half century of your life with nothing more than you started with
Wondering if you’re strong enough to handle starting over
With the old love
Without the new one
And not sure you deserve either
And through it all, come to grips with your own past and its demons
Shedding light on a life spent in the dark in the most public way possible
Light that will hurt and help you…as it hurts and, you pray and hope, will help others more
Light that allows you to be okay with the similarities/contradictions of love and hate
But still leaves questions, burning questions, about whether you are doing the right thing
And needing
Always needing
That and whom, which does not want to be needed
No one wants the burden of constant reassurance
No one has the responsibility of convincing me I’m worthy
No one deserves the mantle of “someone to watch over me”
I’m a lot of work
And the only one up to the job
Equipped for the job
The job of re-assembling my life
Is ME
I’m sorry if these words or these thoughts spoken out loud hurt anyone
That is not the intent
As it is when assembling anything
We must first lay all the pieces out on the table
Take inventory
And (if female) read the instructions
I’ve found the instructions of my life are complicated, often in a foreign language, and perhaps even missing a step or two
But I’ll stick with it
Trial and error
Use my Yankee Ingenuity if I have to
So that in the end, I’ll be reconstructed, reassembled, or re-purposed…
Whichever it is…it’ll be me.
And it’ll be great
We must first break it down to build it up
Let the rebuilding begin
NO
Let the rebuilding continue…for this journey didn’t start today or yesterday
It started November 3rd Nineteen Hundred and Sixty
A long project…a lifelong project…with a punch-list of changes ten miles long
A worthy one?
You bet!
Did I ever mention “I had a hammer?”
50 Shades of Gray Hair 