TWODOPEMOMS.com

This holiday season seems excruciating for me as I smile through the broken shards of my 9 year marriage. The house is the most festive I have seen it since it was built and my daughter was born. There are trees. There are bubbles and joyful trinkets. Everything glistens and glows except my broken heart. Everything sings except when my daughter says “he probably won’t show up, so let’s do something else”. The house that broken love built. So today… I decided that I would turn this house back into a home… one step at a time. My first step was to reclaim the office I had abandoned because I felt pushed out and the office he walked out on when he… damn sure walked out. That room held the eerie stench of a broken marriage. It had NO life in it. It held all the pain and regret he hid from me…. when he sat in that office he was really running away from me and our daughter. This was not the life he wanted and his emotional survival was maintained in that room. While that room for me signified that I had gave up on trying to be loved and naively believed that the love I had for all of us would keep is together. It holds my papers strewn every where… from nights of crying to myself. That room was death and sadness. Today… no more. As the picture showed above… I took the room of death and gave it purpose again. It seems brighter. There is a space in the floor to just turn around really fast in the chair and laugh at yourself. No more spider…. no more is the door closed… hiding the dying part of a home and a representation of my heart. That room LIVES. It is an extension to the rest of the home. You walk in there and you know we thrive in that room…. as my daughter and I will thrive without him. I am going to get a small tree to sit in there so as it can share in the Christmas spirit I am fighting to glorify this holiday season. FIN.

When I met my husband, I was 29. I didn’t believe in forever, I lived for the now. He held my hand. Told me how beautiful I was while making me feel magical and special. I couldn’t imagine life without him and I always wanted to be with him. It was he that started me to invest in forever.

Fast forward one move to America later, one house built later, one miracle baby later… It was the forever that held me in place while my marriage crumbled aimlessly around me. I kept dreaming of those sunrises we’d see in Devon. I kept dreaming of someday visiting Rome as a family.

Forever seemed attainable for me.
Then as he walked out… My belief in forever ended and I was so filled with sorrow, beguiled by pain of having my unconditional love discarded… I immediately stopped believing in forever, because now I realize my forever wasn’t real.

I lost forever in my marriage…
I lost the love in my marriage forever.
Forever.

This month we are exploring happiness… and this couldn’t come at a better time.  I’m about to lose my home, that makes me unhappy.  My 8 year and 6 month marriage dissolved 3 months before my 9 year wedding anniversary and the 10 year anniversary of when we met. Very high on the unhappy meter.  I have these small moments where I’m sad, I am distraught, I’m confused about why someone you love would completely obliterate everything good you believed in them, why would someone walk out (twice) on their child and why life seems so cruel. I blamed  myself for being naïve and wanted to love someone who may never really actually loved me.  So, this puts me as “ZERO NO-HIGHEST” on the unhappy meter. Unhappy @Efabulous1… is not fabulous.

So at some point, I put my big girl panties on today.
I said TO MYSELF …. BE HAPPY.

Lose home and move into tiny apartment with daughter and dog.  That’s okay because I have nice furniture and I really and truly adore my daughter and my dog, plus what’s wonderful is that they love me back and have never once abandoned me.  Sure it’s coming in the future, but those are my best friends right now.

Heart Broken, well… they say to have loved, is better to have never loved at all.  Okay, I will take that silver lining.

Fiscally ruined by divorce proceedings, well it’s no escaping the financial horror of divorce – however there are a lot of people doing a lot worse.

Sarcoidosis and other health issues… triggered by stress, so my job is not to STRESS OUT.
So at some point, I looked at my face in the mirror and remembered I was once a beautiful young girl, with a huge heart, a hearty laugh and I loved the world and all that was in it.

I said to myself…. BE HAPPY.

…and damnit it’s an uphill battle, but I rather fight the good fight to inject happiness, joy, peace and authenticity in my life, than to die inside from marginalizing myself ever again.

That made me internally happy and at peace.

*****

SO, OCTOBER IS “HAPPINESS MONTH”! We will be exploring what makes people happy.  Is there a formula for happiness? How can you keep an IV or “happiness” on tap, so you can invoke those positive feelings and affirmations of positive living at a whim’s notice. Do send us your testimonials of  happiness, ideas… we’d love to share them.

*****

To start the month off right, we must examine some ideas, notions, concoctions, suggestions and all thing HAPPY.  Yet, let’s take a very intellectual approach to start.

In 1960, journalist Gordon Young asked Carl Jung, “What do you consider to be more or less basic factors making for happiness in the human mind?” Jung answered with five elements:

1. Good physical and mental health.
2. Good personal and intimate relationships, such as those of marriage, the family, and friendships.
3. The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature.
4. Reasonable standards of living and satisfactory work.
5. A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life.

*****

What say you… do you agree?

… They never start a story that way. If they did, more people may see marriage as a significant emotional risk and actually give it a lot of thought and investment. Divorce lawyers would be few and far between.

I thought love was supposed to be magical, exciting, wayward, honest, raw, enduring, hard, persevering … Oh yeah and I was totally invested in the whole until death do you part.

When I see this picture, it reaches through me and pull out the most tender part of my soul. Love is like looking at amber leaves as they fall all around you and if you stand ever so still, time will brush by your cheek like the soft waves in the canals. I see this picture and I am reminded that there are fairytales…

They are just dreams for some and far away realities for other.

It seems so cruel, life and its introspective journey. To be told these tales of love, but never witness it whole, to love with all your heart and awake to a nightmare, chaos and to pick your heart up after it shatters
Into
A
Million
Shards of
Broken glass.

I swept mine into a pine box, never to see amber leaves again.

Happily Never After.

When you love from the heart, there are some special moments. Moments when the universe tells you in your soul… I brought you two together for this moment. You feel as though everything you’ve ever done lead us to this moment and you never want it to end. … For some that moment lasts a life time, for some its fleeting.

I now look at my 10 year relationship and 8.75 years of marriage as a pinboard of my heart. You choose special memories to fill your board up and tell a beautiful story, choose not to fill it up with the ugliness of the “End” or the “fairytale” and lies of the beginning. Fill your board up with those authentic, surreal, touching, special moments where the universe told you in your soul… I brought you two together for these moments.

Take your board and frame it as a PDF in your mind. Then delete it from your heart. Smile, laugh and cry when you mentally retrieve your pinboard and relive those astounding moments of love.

This will allow you to forgive and if some of us are ever lucky enough… To love again.

… As I struggle to let my Pinboard of the heart go… I send wishes of peace, fairness, kindness and the restoration of joy to those walking the path with me.

Namaste.

You cannot control LOVE. It cannot be mapped out on a timeline. It cannot grow with fear. You cannot trick it to stay with hope for what you think you want in the future. Real love is driven by destiny, feeling secure in the uncertainty of your passionate feelings, trust in each other and forgiveness of one another. Do not substitute comfortable for Love. Do not settle and call it Love. Just LOVE one another authentically. If you two cannot move forward by letting your past go and shape a new dynamic love without the baggage of your old relationship. Then take a step back and be authentic about what you really want for yourself and go from that place … Be prepared to be truthful and possibly let each other go… -@Efabulous1 for @TwoDopeMoms

So I’m getting a divorce. …and we will leave it at that for details. LOL!  Yet, I found myself back tracking over my entire life. Then with some stellar counseling and some awesome friends I am encouraged to know that you cannot change the past and we don’t know much about life until we live it…. so focus on the future and keep on living.  I woke up today with that on my mind and things seem to click. I seemed to feel better about all that was around me because I’m actually a pretty lucky girl. I have an awesome daughter, fabulous friends, dynamic family, gainfully employed and I can PIN like nobody’s business. Life is good.

So yes, we get knocked down with twist and turns, bumps and bruises…. but you had no idea it was coming and now that you’ve over the hump… keep living.