My goodness, it’s been a while. I mean . . . I can’t believe I’m back here. Never thought I’d see this place again. And everything has changed — you know, as things do. This blog looks somehow . . . smaller. Or maybe I’m bigger. Or maybe it’s just the world that feels bigger.
Divorce will do that to you. Dividing up your children’s hearts will do that to you. And it hangs you all out naked in a blowing wind that you haven’t had to feel for years. Not since before you married and had children.
This blog didn’t used to be naked. It used to be safe, cozy, funny, and honestly, a bit walled up against the ravening forces of a slowly dissolving marriage and family. I used to hide behind it and write what I hoped, with a fevered pitch, would be how everything ended up. Wrote what I was very much trying to create for my family on a daily basis. I wrapped my arms around my young children, squoze my eyes shut, and knew with nothing but a force of will that my life and marriage were going to work out. And I blogged. Hard. From Creative Thinkery, to Janiel Miller: Life in Bits, then splitting off onto Three Gnomes, Smashing Stories, Mormon Momma, LDS Music Universe, and eventually The American Fork Citizen and Meridian Magazine. It was a solid effort.
But the imagery that I felt so hard, and wrote so hard, and tried to flow through my children’s lives didn’t save the actual reality of our lives. It gilded things, but left the center what it was. And now it is what it is: a bit more real. Larger-and-smaller. And not yet back into a safe rhythm. My now mostly adult children square up and move ahead. Because they are that way. But their hearts are hurting. And I helped do that, though not on purpose. I tried. We all tried. But the weight of all that trying broke it, you know? Not my children’s trying; mine and my ex-husband’s. It shouldn’t have been that hard. But it was. And it broke. And now we are something new.
Which is not the worst thing. I mean, we will heal. Are healing. Choosing the new. But for now, wow. We just need to feel it. And maybe not have such a veneer and so many walls and so much trying. Right now our lives are not social-media worthy, because they are real. I’m okay with that. So are my kids–who are so very good. And that’s not social-media glitz. They are finding their depth and choosing to pull it to the surface. I’m proud of them. And want to hug them into the next part of their lives. But that would probably bug the living shortcake out of them, so I won’t. At least not externally.
Meanwhile, we will just live. And cook. And work — hopefully. I’m still on the hunt for that elusive new career. And we will laugh. But it will be real, and it will be whatever we feel like, whenever we feel like it.
So, stay tuned if you want to come along. I’m not really sure what for yet. But honestly, I think it will be something good. 🙂
Divorce can bring about some of the most divergent emotions and feelings. Failure. Indignance. Denial. Tenacity to hang on to what is lost or no longer there. The silver lining is that it passes and you rise up from it better off than before.
Thank you for your comment, Dustin! And I think you are correct about the sliver lining and rising up. It’s a bit phoenix-like sometimes (in terms of all the ashes), and the rising can take some time. But I do see the glimmers now, and I’m grateful. Thank you very much for sharing! I hope you’re in the silver now too.