A Lie By Any Other Name

The on going journey of rebuilding my life as my marriage unravels.

A Lie By Any Other Name

    I have learned many things of late. I have said that before, but it seems with each passing day there are new lessons that somehow I had missed in the hustle and bustle of growing up and making my way in this world. One painful lesson is that not everyone who professes to be your friend really is. Maybe you already know that one...it is one that I am forever relearning. I do not trust easily and I rarely open myself up to others. When I let someone in, it is very hard for me to let them go. I grow deeply attached and they become a touchstone when life gets rough. Sadly, that is not always reciprocated. I honestly think part of the issue is something an instructor pointed out years ago while I was in a phlebotomy class. It was 7:30 in the morning, during the dead of winter, which meant that it was barely light out and even by midday there would still be the need for industrial lighting. The sky stayed an angry steely grey and the temperatures hovered in the mid 30's.  I was thrilled, because I knew I was doing something changing my life. I could not contain my happiness. I went about my lab duties with a smile on my face. This apparently annoyed a few of my classmates. That had taken my marriage falling apart to get me to that point, I chose to ignore. While I was demonstrating the proper way to do a particular tricky blood draw,  one of the other ladies made a snarky comment, after I assured her that she could do it and that it was easy when you got the hang of it. I was going for cheerful and supportive, unfortunately my message fell on deaf ears. Her response was something about being tired of seeing my smiling face every morning....I said nothing. Our instructor turned to her and said that it was not a matter of me not having just as many problems as she did, I simply had learned that I was supposed to hide them.

  That is me in a nutshell. I will hide my pain or struggle. It is how I was raised. When you grow up in a house of secrets and lies you learn that you must carry the burden of silence and false joy with you where ever you go. Also, it is just easier. No one really wishes to know my challenges. They don't. So, when I find someone in this world that I can actually share my real life with, who knows my past and understands me, I treasure those people greatly. I have faith and trust for miles when you have made it past my defenses.

  This slow unwinding of the web of lies that was cocooned around me in the last year of my marriage is heartbreaking. Those that chose for whatever reason to participate in that deceit is heart wrenching.
I had the devastating occasion to stand in open court recently and try to explain how one of the people I adore most in this world, someone who I love and trusted implicitly chose to lie, to make up out of whole clothe a conversation that never happened. The reason given to me later was that she was "protecting" my Wasband, a man she had professed as not caring for and had assured me that she was not involved in any of the things that had transpired. I stood before a Court Commissioner as she asked me to explain a betrayal that cut me to the quick and I could not, so stunned was I.

  After being trusted with the honor of being one of the main care givers for her child for well over a year...after late nights and early mornings sleeping on a lumpy couch, curled around her beautiful baby, who just like his mother was born with colic. I would stay with the baby so his parents could work and take him home with me three or more days a week so that his parents could get a good nights sleep. I loved it, all of it. This beautiful child who stole me heart with his joyful presence was dragged into this horrid, nasty mean season that I am passing through. A statement was put forward that his mother would not allow me to be alone with this loving spirit whom I have cared for and soothed, walked the floors with and who owns a very special place in my heart.

  I really did not think that I could be hurt any further or that any more mud could be thrown my way. I was so wrong. I stood in that court with no words. I had no answers to give as to the why of her actions. I could prove that they were false...I just was lost in that deep well of pain so hard to just tread water...let alone find the strength to climb out of, especially when it is betrayal that has pushed you in. Head first spiraling down with no catch holds and nothing to soften the impact. I do not understand the desire of one individual to make me her Golem...her Boogeyman. She seems to be fashioning and refashioning our past and who I am...someone she must conquer. To be judged and found wanting and then discarded. As hard as this is, I cannot measure for you the depth or the breadth of the sense of loss or the length of my sorrow....I will move forward. I will expose each lie and then walk away. Because I have come far too far, through too much pain and loss to crumble now.

 Divorce is hard and it should be. Ending relationships with those that you love is devastating, but I must. If I do not cut loose these chains they will drag me to the bottom of that stone filled pool. No, I was created to float up to the surface and to find the sun's warm light, we all were.

Broken Things


My heart has been broken recently. There are different kinds of breaks you know, there is the piercing pain that leaves long sharp shards seeping out pain and there is sudden crushing kind that comes so suddenly you cannot breathe and you are not sure that you are even still capable of living on. Today I am shattered into the tiniest, thin pieces jagged and unable to be repaired. No amount of time or commitment will make a difference nor any fixant will be enough to hold fast what was once whole. And so I will wait here. I know that it will take time, many birthdays and Christmases will pass before the emptiness that has been left where the sureness of your love was stored. There is nothing to put in it's place. Nothing would fit, everything would be an interloper, an unwelcome intruder where you once belonged. It is made all the harder that once that same shattered heart beat for we two, until you grew your own. I let you go, because I must. The pain is too great and time is always short. Love well, and instead of being so fast to guard your own heart, protect the hearts of the ones you love. It is those that you have the power to break. And not all broken things can be mended.