When Life Kills You...But Leaves You Breathing...Then What? (My Story)

Title by Steve Spencer, story lived by me.

Where to start? The double divorces? The dramatic weight loss/lifestyle change? The two children? The string of failed relationships where being mislead and cheated on repeatedly by numerous people left me severely co-dependent and broken? The emotional, psychological, and even physical abuse I suffered from both of my husbands? Growing up as a Pastor's Kid with the pressures of being perfect? The breakdown and betrayal from the plethora of "Christians" I called my close friends? The doozy-The Rape? I couldn't choose, so let's just dive in.

~She's a Little Runaway~

I ran away once or twice as a child, doesn't everyone? However, there was one time in particular that I remember vividly. What the situation actually was I can't recall, but the emotion is clear as day, "I'm not good enough." I believe I was in 3rd grade at the time. I pulled out my suitcase, a pillow and a sleeping bag. I told my mom I was running away...she helped me pack. Not in a vindictive or cruel way. More like a parent wanting to let me figure this out on my own. The fact is I am very strong willed and she probably saved herself a lot of trouble handling it that way. I walked myself to my neighbors house and got situated under the tree that myself and the neighbor boys used as a play fort sometimes. I'm sure you could ask my mom how long I was gone and she would know, but to me it felt like days. Eventually the elderly lady that lived there came out and told me I had to go home. So I returned, tail between my legs and everything. This story doesn't play a huge part in who I was or who I've become except for one thing, the voice in my head that said, "I'm not good enough," was a voice that has forever been impossible to silence, and in the times in my life where my confidence was as it strongest point and that voice was a whisper, something broke me and put me back in my place.

~Boys Will Be Boys~

I had my first crush on a boy in 4th grade, I remember his name, his hair cut and his smile perfectly. I attended a year-round elementary school so I had the same kids in my class every year. I liked this boy all the way through 6th grade, even up to the point where my best friend decided she liked him too and they kissed behind the backstop on the baseball field. I never got to kiss that boy...or better yet, he never got to kiss me. It wasn't until 8th grade that I would have my first official boyfriend, (I use the term lightly because the extent of our relationship was passing notes between classes and talking on the phone). This was a big deal, this boy was one of the, if not the most popular guy in school. He uuuuh, grew up fast, was athletic and had great hair. (Looked him up on Facebook awhile back and he's fat now so that's cool, ha). This boy would be the first one in a long list that would make me cry. After months of going out we had our first fight, and during this fight I would suffer the wrath of a pissed off man for the first time. During the class we had together he passed me a note that read, "Why are your boobs so small and your thighs so big?" As if I wasn't insecure enough. ("I'm not good enough.") We eventually made up, he would later become my first kiss, and shortly there after would cease to remember I existed when my family moved 45 minutes away to plant a church. So much for "true love." So there's the groundwork leading up to my string of failures. I started high school in a new city with small boobs, (they were average), big thighs, (they weren't that bad), and poor-ish in a land of rich kids. Perfect.

I used to pride myself on the fact that I didn't care what people thought. Well my high school taught me to care, in fact, it required it. My first week of school a cheerleader that sat behind me grabbed the collar of the back of my shirt and flipped the tag out to look at it. When I asked what she was doing she told me she wanted to see what brands I wore...when I told her I didn't know she looked at me like I had just slapped her grandma. I was in a twilight zone, completely out of my element and less than prepared for what lied ahead. (I'm not good enough.) Long story short, I survived, but not entirely unscathed. My first high school boyfriend would eventually experiment with drugs (I did not), and would make out with my best friend after school one day. I tell you this because I now believe it set the stage for my tolerance on this type of situation later on. I almost view it as like a callus, not to say that it hurts less every time it happens, some hurt worse than others, but the recovery is quicker and it becomes easier to forgive. At least it worked that way for me.

~The Betrayal~

I know, I know, you want me to get to the good stuff. I'm working my way to it, believe me. Meanwhile during all of this high school drama, (literally), my family had planted this church I mentioned earlier. I went to church every Sunday my entire life, when we started this church it became a part-time job for which I wasn't paid. In fact it cost me. Our church was for new believers, or seekers as it was, and I helped with the worship, (I've also been singing my whole life,) my dad preached every Sunday, and my mom helped with everything else. I loved the church, I loved the people, and I loved God. The families became my family, I babysat their kids (usually for free), my mom would cook meals and was basically a friend, counselor and everything else you could imagine, and we would host Bible Studies at our house frequently. This was our life. My family put every ounce of love and devotion into these people for just over 4 years. You know what they say, all good things must come to an end, and there's always a bad egg, well that about sums it up. One man that was a family member of someone I was extremely close to was that bad egg. Why he did things he did I can't say for sure. But, his poisonous ways spread and in church lingo we had our first "church split." This happened just after I barely survived high school. People that I considered family betrayed my family, turned their backs on us, and my entire world was turned upside down. (I'm not good enough.) The emotions that I felt would be nearly impossible to describe, in fact unless you have actually been through something similar, I don't think you could understand. It's like combining the pain from every break-up you've ever had times 250. To be precise, It's 12 years later and I'm not over it, (my parents would get divorced not long after all of this, in part because of this, and I recovered from that faster.) It hurt me so deeply that I moved away when I got the opportunity with my job. Since then I can count the number of times I have been to church (not counting Christmas Eve) without taking off my shoes. I did not survive this as unscathed as I did high school. In fact when I moved back home, almost 5 years later, I saw one of the couples while shopping at Costco and that scab got picked and I bled all over again. This has yet to change, even to this day. (And as far as the bad egg is concerned, well, I actually look forward to the day when I accidentally run into him).

.....So, there's the beginning...check back soon because this story isn't even close to being over. (I promise there's some good parts!)

Wants v. Needs; Winning Disguised as Losing

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
-Oscar Wilde

Before you begin, read that quote again and really think about it. I'll come back to it at the end.

In the times we live in wants and needs have largely become defined as one in the same. The majority of Americans have become so spoiled by modern conveniences that we no longer want, we need. I am guilty of these feelings myself. Tomorrow is Monday morning and my first thought will likely be, "I need coffee." Do I need coffee? No, I would continue living and breathing without coffee, but I want coffee because it's delicious and takes the edge off. You see my point? Of course you do. Most would agree there are three basic, acceptable "needs," food, clothing, and shelter. I feel that there is a wild card that occasionally gets mentioned in songs etc, the fourth human need is love. (And there are at least four people that think all you need is love.) This is the need that's on my mind now, and the effect that it has on our choices. Now, this want v. need theory isn't quite the same in regards to relationships. In relationships, I believe, there are wants and needs, and confusing the two can really screw things up.

I'm going to take it a step farther and tell you a little bit about my journey and explain how wants disguised as needs can really send you down a rocky road. (Not the delicious kind either.) The stories I am about to share are all true, and some of them have taken me over a decade to talk about. I don't need to start at the very beginning because I don't feel it has too much impact on the topic. It's almost ironic because up until this year I could count the people that knew about what happened to me on one hand. My heartbreak I mentioned in the previous blog forced me to do a lot of soul searching and I started putting pieces together and eventually realized that one night really started it all.

When I was 18 years old I was on a work trip with many people my age and early twenties. The week before this trip, my boyfriend at the time cheated on me, and I found out from someone else. My heart was bruised (though I thought broken,) and I couldn't wait to get away. The company put us up in a hotel and we worked all day and then partied at night. I had never really experienced much of the party scene up until this point and was inexperienced with drugs and alcohol. How exactly it happened I'm not entirely sure, but one minute I was in a room with about 10 people drinking and smoking and the next minute I was sitting on a bed immobile and drunk. Next thing I knew, it happened. Everyone had left the room but one guy, and that night he took from me something no one should ever take. The worst part was, I was conscious enough to remember it all, including the sound of my voice sobbing and begging him to stop. I told no one. Afraid for my job, afraid to get in trouble for drinking and being underage, and ashamed. That night my views on sex and love had changed. Sex wasn't special, it was just sex, and sometimes even a chore, and love, well, love was something I didn't think existed anyway. I left that trip a cold, tainted, negative person with my first tattoo I had drawn the night after it happened, a shattered and broken heart with flames coming out.

Now here's the part where things got messy. Most of my understanding has been very recent, when I did the things I did, they were not intentional, I was going through the motions. Despite my lack of belief in love, it is one of the human needs so obviously I longed for it. However, now a relationship required more than just love. I not only needed love, but the next guy I dated had to make me feel safe, because you see, a part of me was extremely traumatized and I was almost afraid of men sometimes. I also wanted to be with someone that I knew wouldn't cheat on me, the only way to ensure that (if there even is such a thing) was to date down. Please remember I didn't know what I was doing at the time, hindsight really is 20/20. Shortly after returning home I began dating one of my managers that I knew was into me. He was over 6 ft tall, and just under 300 pounds, and came fully equipped with a closet full of Raiders jerseys. Very few men would be able to hurt me if I was with him, and at the time I was a cute little blue eyed, light brown haired, outgoing girl with a winning sense of humor...ha.

Fast forward 3 years, one break up, one make up and we got married. Fast forward another 5 months and my stuff was packed and I left with only what I could fit in my Civic while he was at work. So what happened? Why didn't I figure out I couldn't be with him before I married him? If he was what I wanted why didn't it work out? All of that back story was just to get to these questions, so I could tell you the answers, and why I believe so many people have long term relationships that initially seem so good and one day you feel like you are going to go completely bonkers if you pick up one more Q tip that he just can't seem to make into the trash can!

We need love, all of us. The trouble comes when we start to add stipulations to it that aren't permanent. How each of us shows and receives love is a little different. (Please read the 5 Love Languages for more information on this.) Here's what I'm trying to say, Husband #1 loved me, and I loved things about him. Did you catch that? The simple fact that I knew he loved me is what dragged our story out for so long. However, my needs for dating him in the first place lost value over time. Eventually I didn't believe every guy in Target was plotting to rape me in the garden department, and I had been comfortable living in the land of fidelity for almost 3 years. My "needs" changed. More accurately, my need was still love, a mutual love, but my wants changed. When those two things weren't a priority, it opened my eyes to all of the things he was doing to me or ways he was treating me that were wrong. In other words, I saw the relationship for what it really was, and the sad truth was my wants were being met, but my needs weren't. Had I figured this out then, it would have spared me a second divorce. Sadly, I repeated the process, but this time with different wants, which eventually lost value again.

So, how did I figure this out? By falling in love with someone when I didn't want anything. I was tapped out, dried up, all I needed was love. As time went on, I had the best relationship of my life. The bright side to all this heartache was without it, I wouldn't have been able to really know what I needed. I could sit here and list the things about my relationship that made it the best, but they are going to be unique to me. In order for you to have a successful relationship, you are going to have to sort through your own list of wants and needs, and be honest with yourself. If I wouldn't have found this special person, I don't know if I could have done that, because in some ways, I didn't know my needs until he kept meeting them. My theory behind that is I didn't know my needs, because I had a decade old secret, and every day after that I lost a little more of who I was, until on some level I didn't even know myself. I have learned more about myself in the past three months than I have my whole life.

The best advice I can give on how to figure all this out is:
Regardless of your current relationship status, write down 5-10 things that you feel you need out of a relationship. These can be qualities in a partners, mutual hobbies, emotional compatibility, etc. Don't think about it too much, just write the first things that come to your mind because those are likely the most important and likely honest. If you have more than 10 that's good! You know what you want, you're already ahead of most of us. Now one by one, go down your list focusing on each item and ask yourself if this was gone from my relationship in 5 years, but I still loved the person would I still be happy. The ones where you can answer yes, those are your wants. If you say no to any of those things then that becomes a need. Things that shouldn't be compromised or forgotten about. I'll give you an example of one of each for me to give you an idea.
Want-I want my partner to love the outdoors as much as I do.
Need-I need my partner to be my best friend.
It would be ideal if my partner liked to go to the mountains, the beach, and just be outdoors with me. However, if he only came along once and awhile I could live with that. Until my recent relationship I had never dated a guy that I felt was my best friend. This is one of the things I was telling you about that I wouldn't have known was a need without having it. I would not be happy in a relationship unless I felt that way, and that is something I am unwilling to compromise on.

This was a long one, but hopefully you learned something. Now if you remember the quote I began with, hopefully after reading this you can come up with an example or two of your own when getting what you wanted wasn't necessarily the best thing. My life has been filled with moments like that. I'd get an idea in my head and I'd fight for it throwing caution and rationality to the wind. The good news is now I'm aware of it, now I take a good look at each situation before jumping in blindly. It's a conscious effort, and I still screw it up, but I screw up a lot less than I did 5 or even 10 years ago. There's hope for us yet! My thought is that if I can help even just one person do things better than I did than it wasn't all for nothing. Part 2 of  "If it's not Broke..." coming soon. Hope you all have a great week!

If it's Not Broke.... Pt 1

"Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't." -Stephen King from "Heart in Atlantis"

or

"Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable." -Wizard of Oz

If heart breaks were uncommon they wouldn't be mentioned so frequently. From music, to poems, to novels, movies, TV shows, the list is endless and it is the one disease that every human suffers from at least once in their lifetime. This is a topic that will undoubtedly come up again and again, but for now I have a few thoughts on the matter.

First of all, sadly, some of you reading this are already recollecting your assumed heart breaks and commiserating along with me. At the ripe old age of 30 I have recently discovered that if you asked me at 29 how many heart breaks I had experienced, I would have thrown out a number somewhere between 10-15. Ask me today and I'll tell you my heart has truthfully been broken only once. The other assumed heart breaks I had experienced were nothing more than what I would refer to today as heart bumps and bruises. Allow me to explain: any time you make yourself vulnerable in the love department, and that relationship ends, whether mutually or by the element of surprise (i.e., "This isn't working out, it's not you it's me," "Umm, honey, who's lipstick is this on your shirt?" or my favorite, "I hate to do this to you after all this time, but I really need to do the right thing and stop screwing you on the side." Let me tell you, there are few things worse than finding out you are the side salad when you assumed you were the best damn filet that fool could get. At 18 I had deemed my heart broken so badly that I have a tattoo to show for it. Even that time was nothing more than my heart getting a TKO in one round with Muhammad Ali, bruised but not broken.

Ok, so now you are probably wondering, what is my definition of a heart break then? I think true heart break varies by person for sure. In my heart bruises, I cried for days, felt sick, thought I would never get over it, either ate or starved my feelings, wanted to disappear, tortured myself with pictures, had nightmares, and even tried fixing the situations out of desperation. (Hindsight has left me SO grateful I didn't have success mending any of those prior situations, ha.) The list goes on, the majority of which were all eventually healed with the help of friends, family, time, and Ben and Jerry. My heartbreak had all of those same symptoms, but there were some variations and certainly some additions, the first one being simply this, at a point in my life where I truly believed I had everything to live for and so much going for me, I wanted to die. The quote I began with by Stephen King really hit home when I read it a month or two after the Break. Let me be clear, I wasn't suicidal, it wasn't a desire to die in a literal sense at all actually. I was in such severe pain, physically, emotionally, and in every other way possible, that I just lost all desire for life. My world was rocked., no other way to describe it. It was like I was Dorothy starting out in Oz and got abruptly teleported to Kansas and suddenly my beautiful world was lacking color and a twister was headed straight for me. If you are one of the people who have experienced something like this then you know exactly what I'm talking about. It took about a week before I could even think or process normal thoughts, and one of the first things I realized was exactly what I'm telling you now, every other heartbreak was just a heartbruise in disguise. It was like a tragic epiphany! "Holy shattered dreams Batman! My heart was still completely in tact until now! Ka Baaaam!"

To Be Continued......