He came back. He didn't stay.

He came back. He didn't stay.

He said he loved me. Still. After all this time.

He said he was still obsessed with me.

He said nothing and no one matches the intensity he felt with me. He said he missed being "the hot couple". He said he missed being with someone who turned heads when we entered a room. He said he wanted to take me on a date. He did. He said he wanted to take me to Vegas. He didn't. He said a lot of other things, some of which did, and did not happen.

He said he was still obsessed with me.

He said he loved me. Still. After all this time.

And still, he did not choose me.

You can have a top spot in a heart, and still be denied.

He came back. He didn't stay.


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August blurbs

A couple of musings from August 16th, the anniversary that wasn't.

one

In 2012, I shattered, entire. As I built myself back over a summer, fall, and winter, I was never more open. The omens were everywhere, and that's when I learned the universe is tailored just for me, as it is for you. 

Relatives who had passed on came to visit me in animal form. The animals were everywhere. There were notes scrawled on the sidewalks, and the walls. I had visions of the child I would one day mother. I had dreams where I traveled from this plane, I saw heaven. 

Never again, have I experienced that kind of connection to the universe. Never again, have I been that earthed.

Maybe I didn't need it. Until now. "I could sure use an omen or two", I've been whispering to the cosmos. 

But I know it requires just as much effort on my part. 

I must not be cloudy. 

I must pay attention. 

I must know it when I see it. 

The visit from my ancestors yesterday was one. 

When you left me, I experienced a dream like those from five years ago. This time it was to be embraced by a real, and equal love. How different.

Today's omen came in the reminder that there are no coincidences, and time is magical.

A chance conversation with a stranger to give me all the right reminders, and to send me on my way...okay. 

two

What I would say to you today, if I could?

Today, I sat where we sat every year. I had to go to our spot, because where else would I go? Buried deep, or not so deep at all, was my hope to see you. To see you had taken the day off. To be here. 

"Your last name is Wride?" Surely someone would say. "How funny, there is a man here with that same last name!"

I wanted to write you. "Please, as someone who was so recently your wife, and love, give me a moment off the record. Please, if there is any part of you, I don't care how small, who doubts this...meet me tonight. If somewhere in there, past ego, past pride, you feel you don't want this, this emotional, financial, mental, devastation of us, meet me. Meet me in the lobby of our spot. 6 pm. The time we said our vows three years ago today. I'll be waiting for you with a glass of champagne. And if you choose not to, please don't use this against me. Please disregard this, as someone who was so recently your wife, and love."

In my minds eye, he he comes. He walks in, wearing his suit. He doesn't want our destruction. He wants to come home. "Yes," I say. But I approach delicately. I ask we just try for a day, or a weekend. It's so fragile. 

And that's where it stops. I can't see further. And I know I am not allowed to ask this of him, although this is my biggest wish. 

Come home, my heart says. Come home. 

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Happy Anniversary

Tomorrow is our anniversary. Three years since the most beautiful day of my life. My beautiful husband cried beautiful tears and spoke beautiful words he'd written, promising to love me forever. There are certain lines that still play in my head.

Today, I am sad. I am on day three of sad. After feeling pretty good for awhile, I'm experiencing a small setback. I am still so confused. I don't understand how one minute a family vacation is being booked, we are talking of purchasing burial plots, I am suddenly told I must have another baby or our relationship is over, then six days later, it's really done.

I told you on the spot I would do anything for you. Yes to anything, yes to everything. You tricked me. Did you mean to? I spent six days agonizing. Searching myself to see how quickly I could have another baby. At my deepest interior I found I could. I caught myself up, up to the immediate yes I gave you. Here I am. Our son is 17 months tomorrow. My hormones have settled. The haze has cleared. I am ready for our baby and my option is gone.

I may never be able to have another baby again, and you took it all away from me. 

So here I am. Sad, today. 

"I still feel like he is my husband, I still feel like I belong to him", I say out loud. I am certain if I try hard enough, I can wish it back into existence. He will reach out. He'll say it's gone too far. He'll be ready to put in the work. To apologize for ever scaring me, calling me names. The weight of this is just too much, today. 

I don't want to go it alone. I don't want to lose my life. My home. My family. I can't see into the future, and that's so, so scary. 

I am outside with my mom, and son. I am swirling inside with my thoughts and my should-haves and can't-haves. I am imagining various timelines for myself. I let myself linger in the one where I am still married to my love. Where we wake up in the same place. Where he comes home after work. Where I am pregnant. Where my time goes to raising my babies. Its a cozy, small life. The small life.

Right then, a breeze blows, and I feel the energy of my female ancestors pass through me. For a moment, I am frozen, chills run though my body. I feel the size and shape of my physical self, the space I take up, and I am more deeply rooted in my being than I have been in months. I am momentarily statuesque. "I can feel my armor", is what comes into my head. I let myself wear it in that moment, it all happens so fast, and I hear them whisper to me loud and clear, "oh no, you are not meant for small. There is big out there. There is big for you." And just like that, they are gone...

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Two months later.

Two months to the day.

I'm in a new dimension. The spell was broken. You look completely different to me now. Each interaction these days dispels the beautiful myth I'd built around you more.Truth chiseled away the clouded lens I used to view you through. 

For six years I could not see. 

Two months ago I thought I'd die of a broken heart. The pieces would shatter, and I'd surely choke on one. That would be the end of me. I was drowning, sure you'd ended me. 

What a surprise, it didn't take as long as I'd anticipated to discover my heart was in fact, whole. Beating and toughened. 

Even bigger than before. 

I'm simply exhausted, you see. You did exhaust me, I'll give you that. Six years is a long time to try to get someone's love. Six years is a long time to lose, or be on the verge of losing, someone again, and again. Six years is a long time to love someone who has one foot in, and one foot out. 

I was more ready than I knew, to be done. I could resist no more. I let you out of my heart. With your release, I got my life back, my love for life back. My energy has returned. The energy I was giving to the ghost all this time.

The ghost had always made it clear how easy it would be to leave. How his limits were far more easily reached than mine would ever be. The ghost, whom I no longer love. I no longer love him, like those who came before me. I no longer love the ghost, who demonstrated so many times, the ability to cut off, shut out, leave. I couldn't see it before. The trail of the ghosting. What other outcome would there have ever been?

You weren't ready.

Ready to stay.

Ready to love.

Ready to be loved.

Once you were the end all be all, king of my world. 

There is no more pedestal. 

There is no more forcing my love.

Giving up the ghost turned me right side-up. 

I can't throw a stone without hitting a cute boy. They're everywhere. There wasn't just you. A lesson I'm finally excited to have learned. Now I've got my armor; knowledge. Now I can see. Next time, I won't be an "escape". I won't be your easy out. I won't be an item on a check-list. I won't rush. To be with, commit to, give myself, entire. Next time, I'll choose wisely. And choose, I will...eventually. 

For you see, there are things I haven't yet experienced that I now, one day, look forward to, from the one(s) who are ready. Ready to love, to be loved. Ready to accept. Their faults, my faults, and ready to stay, entire.

Nowhere to go.

"Grief is just love with nowhere to go." 

I've stumbled upon the perfect quote, and I'm thinking of it throughout the day. I ping-pong between moments of rest, and being seized with sadness. For a minute I think I'm going to be okay, and then my heartbreak is debilitating. 

I can't help but feel this is a monstrous waste. A rash, hurried, angry waste. The depths of what this is are unbearable. I do not want this. I do not want this for me. I do not want this for him. I do not want this for our boy. 

My boy no longer lives under the same roof as his mother and father. 

He will never see us kiss. 
He will never bound into our bed, waking us up early on a Christmas morning. 
He will never sit between us on the couch, watching a Disney movie. 
He will not take another family vacation. 
He will not be given a sibling from the two of us. 
He will never hear us tell the other, "I love you." 
He will not remember how hard it got for the two of us, but also how much love was there. 

All time is happening at once. We are speaking our wedding vows, we are watching our son be born, we are divorcing. Divorcing. And what can I do? What was I to do when I was being taunted with the word, divorce, for over a year? What was I to do, but beg and plead and nearly lose my dignity in the process? Don't leave me. What could I do, if I alone was willing to walk through the fires, to the ends of the earth, to fix anything and everything that came our way? 

What if what came our way damaged me emotionally, mentally, and physically in the process? My appetite vanished, my anxiety mounted, and I questioned my self worth. My worth. To feel unworthy is a scary spot to be. 

But what if I still I wanted to fight for us? What happens when one won't stop fighting, and the other won't start? What's to be done when you're desperate to draw someone out of communication shut-down, and they aren't a willing participant? What do you do when you ask for help for him, for you, for your baby, and nobody answers your cries? 

What if, despite it all, you don't want it to end? 

To end without a fight is such a devastating shame. In these moments, where I can't catch my breath, I am sinking. My love with nowhere to go is suffocating. So abrupt. 

I longed to talk about the depths of motherhood. But depth became off limits. Wasn't this just a season of life? Weren't we just getting back to dates? Planning our first getaway early next year for just the two of us? We had just begun. Barely at three years of marriage. I couldn't even have three, and I would have given every single one I had left. I am forever altered by this. 

How could so much be taken from me? This is a low, low grief. 


And when I see him...how will I ever look at him and not see my husband? I will miss him forever. I will love him for always. I move forward off-kilter, housing something broken inside. 

It is gone. It is all gone. 

Maybe this was never mine to keep. This is not the first time my heart has been shattered by my Great Love. The one who left me behind once for eight months. From that I barely recovered. Here we go again. 

My Great Love who talked of our future up until the moment our lives exploded. My Great Love who tried to leave me so many times. It was inevitable. How many times must I be left, or told I'm going to be left, before I believe it, and act on it as well? How many more days can I stay, scared? Physically, mentally, and emotionally declining? Scared of an anger that my Great Love came with, and one that seems to be amplified by life with me. 

Yet my heart still screams: Stop this! Stop all of this! End it now! Fight for this! This is can't be how our story ends! Don't run away! Look ahead! This shattered life is not for us!

Grief is just love with nowhere to go. I've been broken, but my love stayed intact. 

Thank goodness for our son. Our beautiful, magical son. He is a bit of what was, of what I believe should still be, and all the reason in the world to press on. The brightest spot in my life. The boy who I'm said to love too much. To me, there will never be any such thing as too much. 

Thank god for my capacity to love, and my role as his mother. 

This tiny boy has saved my life. 

When to leave the one you love.

I came across this article yesterday, The only 8 times it's excusable to leave someone you truly love.   

The 8 conditions listed: 
You're unhappy and it's clearly because of the relationship
The good times are outweighed by the bad
You don't see yourself spending your life with your partner
You have lost trust in your partner
Your partner doesn't treat you the way you deserve to be treated
Your partner cheated on you
You fell in love with someone else
You're not capable of loving your parter the way your partner deserves to be loved.

I was about to repost, but couldn't formulate the sentence or two that would accompany why I was posting.  I realized I needed to think about it a little longer, and tackle it in a blog post instead.  When searching for the article online today, I found another.  10 Ways to Know It's Time to Leave Your Relationship. 

The 10 conditions listed:
Physical Abuse
Verbal/Emotional Abuse, Overly Controlling Behavior
Child Abuse
Financial Abuse
Substance Addictions
Affairs
Different Paths
Lack of Support for Being All You Can Be
Different Needs for Intimacy
One foot out the Door - Fear of Commitment

Before my now husband, I spent years in a relationship.  I'm still learning from the experience.  The why's.  Why I went into it, why I stayed in it, and why I got out of it.  I learned so much and while I want to protect my ex and and keep details private, there's a big part of me that wants to share what I learned in hope I might inspire another woman, or man to have courage to leave a situation that no longer serves them, or their partner.  Staying stuck serves neither, and until you are both free to find your truth, you are existing at half capacity.  When you are truly ready to believe that, when you are ready to set yourselves free, you'll see there was nothing to fear.  It's excruciating, yes.  But necessary.  And guess what? The weight lifts.  The healing happens.  Then comes truth and happiness.

In the first article, I was 4/8.  In the second, 5/10.  However, there is one more I'd like to add that wasn't on either list.  It won't be make or break for everyone, but for some it's reason enough to move on,  and hopefully to a partnership where you feel like an active participant.

You exist in their already established world and routine.

In the end I learned that I didn't need it easy.  I didn't need to move right into a world that was already set in many areas.  The home, the furniture, the decor, and the finances.  Instead, I needed to begin a journey on equal footing,  I wanted to create from the ground up alongside someone.  I wanted someone to budge a little more for me, and inspire me to budge a little more for them.  I wanted room to grow, and to grow together.  I wanted to stumble through it to find the us.

I said goodbye.  To forcing a fit.  To a dynamic that had become anything but a romantic relationship.  To material security.  To a house.  To a car.  To insurance.  To not having to pay for many of the bills.  I jumped.  I set myself free. I set him free, in the only way that I could.  I leapt into my truth and left him to do the same.

This is when it's excusable to leave someone you love.  When your inner voice starts whispering that little word, "go" that eventually turns to a shout, "GO!" It's telling you to go for a reason.  It's telling you that this isn't your fit.  If it's not your fit, how can it be theirs? If you are miserable, how can they not be? And if they don't know that you are, then they are not in tune with you.  And if they are not in tune with you, how much can this truly be the best fit for them?

Sometimes, setting someone free is the most loving thing you can do.

And sometimes, leaving the one you love is not only okay, but crucial.

You're free.  

No option other than to flourish.  

Go.


Thanks for reading,

Deena Marie