Layover of my Life

Layover of my Life
11/5/11

In March of '10 I began to run. I started to run from the life I'd been hiding behind for 17 and a half years. While not a runner, I should be more specific and say that I began to walk. My walks began slowly and in some rather inclement weather conditions. Escaping after dinner each night, I'd announce my need to walk. I'd head out with my music and my link to the life I hoped to run to, my cell phone.

At first the walk was a simple route and my goal was to only be gone 30 minutes. Long enough to slip away and get lost in the seasons as winter melted away and spring showed promise of warm days to come. As my visual landmarks got further away each night, I would tell myself that it was bad luck to only make it to the murder house, the church and the cemetery. Eventually I was making it all the way to the next road, where superstition told me it was safe to turn around and head home. My nightly escape was just under an hour. Long enough to listen to an entire cd, check my email, txt a friend and if I was lucky, talk to the man who was waiting for me on the other side of the world. My walk became an addiction and it was something that I had to do each night. It seemed to be the only thing in my life I had control over as the rest of my life was spinning wildly out of control. On those walks I was able to gain perspective. I was able to hear through the static.

I missed only a handful of days between March and July. In March I faced days where I could not feel my thighs when I returned home. Frozen to the core I was able to numb the pain I would feel upon returning home, at least until the heat thawed them and I returned to my pretend life. In July, the heat I endured would leave me an exhausted sweaty mess, reminding me of how close to hell I was as I indulged in sin after sin.

Sometime that summer, as my pretend life began to unravel and small glimpses were given to the outside players, I decreased my walks. The distraction they provided were no longer conducive to the complete focus I needed at home to juggle both lives and do what I needed to do to keep my flight delayed. Ready to board the plane at any moment and depart for a new life, I had to wait until all passengers had boarded.

The seasons once again changed and with winter just a flip of the calendar away, my walking plan ended. My life was on a full speed marathon and it was all that I could do not to fall, get trampled and perhaps even die. Survival soon replaced escape as my goal.

In the blink of an eye, my life changed and I had to board the plane. It made a quick departure but was not able to reach its destination in one shot. The jet needed some repairs, the GPS had to be upgraded, and some of the luggage was left behind at the airport. Legal details like passports had not been finalized and the underage passengers needed to be brought up to date on the travel plans.

So as my plane sits on the tarmac, waiting for my companion and the flight to be cleared for take off, I am being put up in a hotel. I am content to sit with my thoughts and focus on my new goals. I have tried to go out and walk around the grounds of the hotel and clear my head, but the act takes me back to March of '10 and the emotions which forced me out of my house after dinner. The surroundings are different, the route not the same, but inside I am the same person reliving that time of my life. I feel the climate changes and taste the air. I wonder who I am and how I got here.

I know that when I get to a place which I am able to call home again, with an authentic life, I will be able to go out and enjoy walking again. There will be new goals and new feelings and eventually a new identity with a new name. But at this time, I do not feel at home. I am in purgatory...I am in between pretend and real....I am laid over.

Flashing Back to 8/8/09- on 8/24/11

One of the reasons that writing is so powerful for me is that it is a chance for me to see myself as an outsider. I can allow my psyche to flow from my fingertips and then come back later to get inside my own head. Writing is very much like dreaming for me. I usually don't remember my dreams, or only recall pieces. What I am able to retell seems like ridiculous nonsense and jumps from person to setting to time frame, leaving me confused and wondering what I was thinking.

Today I spent some time reading my old blogs from the summer of 2009. A pretty pivotal point of my life, as I was coming to terms with my unhappiness and the trapped feeling that I felt in my marriage. I came across this entry from Saturday, August 8, where I expressed jealousy over our two cats, I came upon, cuddled up together. I longed for someone to hold me, be close to me, understand me, love me. I felt so alone. I desperately ached to be wanted. As I read my own words, and looked back at a former self I no longer identify with, I realized how powerful it is to record my thoughts and feelings.

I haven't written in what seems a lifetime. It is part of me and I miss it. However, I know why I have stopped. I write from the heart. I don't hold back, I tell it like it is and I need to write not just for myself, but for others. For a while I got pretty good at being cryptic and disguising the truth with analogies and riddles. Only those who were closest to me really knew the nightmares I was running from, the dreams I was chasing. Everyone else was able to take their own struggles and identify with my words. My writing was therapy for not just myself, but for others.

Now that my life is an open book, I feel I have to be much more guarded about what I put out there. The simplest things offend others or are misunderstood, and taken the wrong way. There is no more hiding behind creative words for me. It is out there on the table or not at all.

So every now and then I travel back in time and read my words. Like a drummer who has lost use of his arms, listening to his recorded music, I long for those days I could play. Yes, I could change my writing topics, just as the drummer could be musically successful in another way, but I am not ready. I'm just not ready.

In the meantime, I will bask in the arms of someone who loves me and be grateful that my writing kept me sane until my dreams came true.

The Writing's in the Rings 7/31/11

Today I stop wearing the rings which were blessed and placed on my finger 19 years ago on this very day. A step I struggled with as they'd become more a part of me than the man I married. My rings brought me happiness and security. The longer I wore them, the more I realized that my marriage, not my rings, should have been fulfilling me.

My rings and I have had a close bond. They have guided and been there for me when I couldn't find my way out of darkness. Two years ago, the gold, worn thin in the back from 17 years of commitment, cracked and broke. Not wanting to part with them long enough to have them fixed, I endured the pain they caused and continued to wear them. The pain they caused from my skin being pinched by the break paralleled the pain in my heart from a marriage I knew was over. At summer's end I gave in and had them repaired. I had no idea what my rings had in store for me when I placed them back on my finger.

It was a blissful reunion that afternoon I picked them up from the jeweler. I spent just as much time admiring them as I did the first day they were slid on my finger. But something was different. Something had clearly changed. I could feel it in my heart, as that vein connected to the 4th finger on my left hand carried the message from the newly polished precious metal. I wasn't sure what it was but I had to know. I spent some time with a glass of wine and some good lighting, looking it over. At last I found the change. During the repair, some of the engraving inside had been polished out. My heart skipped a beat as I noticed that it was my husband's name that had been removed. Could this really be? Was my ring telling me that the way to remove the pain was to remove my husband?

I put the rings back on and forgot about it as I went on with my life. As life went on, some other unexpected things came about. Happiness and friendship with someone who understood me like no one on earth ever had. As things intensified I began to panic. What was I doing? Where was I going? The message in my ring called to me. I studied the void again, asking if this is what I was truly to do. This time, in the void, I realized that a small piece of a letter remained when the ring was read upside down. The letter this created was the first letter of the man's name who I feared was to change my life forever. The letter next to it which was at the end of another word left untouched, was the first letter in his last name.

The happiness and security these rings have brought me for the past 19 years have been waiting to tell me something. They held the key to my future and were just waiting for the timing to be right. As my life changed forever, it also changed the lives of many others in its wake. But sometimes it is necessary to be the one to put change into place. It isn't always a pretty picture when it happens. It isn't always flowers, lace and romance. But it is always as its meant to be, as life is already written. We are simply turning a page a day.

Today, I replace my rings with a new ring. A ring I bought with my daughter, to remind me to stop and smell the roses, even if it means getting hurt on a thorn as I do. What good is a beautiful garden if we don't enter the gate and enjoy it with all of our senses? I don't want to just admire it from a distance. I want to go inside. I want to live life. I want to be happy.