It’s hard to imagine what sort of future I want, especially because the premises of my circumstances keep changing and throwing me for a loop. There are other factors as well, like what I think is realistic, what I can handle, and what I think I deserve.
I don’t think that I have a good grasp of reality. Maybe I am that talented, driven, and lucky. Maybe I’m more like everyone else. I don’t know.
Is there something that I’m meant to be doing?
The weird thing is, I stayed strong in my faith until I had a miracle happen. The sort of, “Whoa, I did not see this coming, and this really helps everything,” sort of miracle. Instead of feeling bolstered, it was like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me. I guess it’s one thing to have faith in complete darkness, but when I started moving towards light with no idea where it was coming from … that’s when it got scary. False hope? A brighter future? I have no idea.
Why would that sort of miracle happen to me anyway?
My body couldn’t take the stress though. I couldn’t sleep or eat, and I lost nearly 20lbs in two months. It left me feeling forced into the next step I took.
Not that I know what I should and shouldn’t share about what’s going on.
As it stands right now in my tiny corner of the world, I need a future. I need to figure out what future I’m aiming for. I need to stop feeling like a 17-year-old staring at high school graduation without the foggiest clue of what’s supposed to come next, especially considering that I’m 20 years past that.
I want to be a writer, but between betrayal trauma and living expenses, I’m just not sure anymore … it seems so unrealistic now.
After all, how many miracles can I expect to get me through?
I have lots of moments throughout the day when I’m overcome with the surreal thought of, “How is this my life?”
I’m not sure how much I should publicly share. Parts of it make me think of the line, “Lawyers clean up all details / since daddy had to lie” from the song End of Innocence by Don Henley, and the title itself feels apt enough.
There are days when it’s easier to lose myself in a list of things that have to be done, and not think about the big picture of what I’m doing. My heart stops every time the doorbell rings, and I wish that this wasn’t my reality.
Events are traveling through the neighborhood grapevine faster than I would have ever expected, but by now I have surrendered my pride and laid everything bare. People are more supportive than I anticipated, and I like how they periodically check in with me. I don’t really care if it’s morbid curiosity or genuine concern, as long as I have people surrounding me through all this.
I still feel hopelessly lost. I keep wondering when that feeling will fade, when something will come together and start to feel solid, but instead everything under my feet keeps crumbling.
And I don’t even know how much I should share, because it’s moved into the legal sphere now.
For all my life, I heard divorce talked about like it was an ending. In reality, it’s a beginning. Sometimes people take it as permission to punish you, to erase you, to make your life as miserable as they can. After all, why should they care? They’ve already moved on to their new partner, and you’re just a loose end and a failure. An object that no longer serves a purpose.
But I’m not.
I will not be erased. I will not surrender my life just because someone thinks that my existence is inconvenient now.
And the legal sphere is where I still have rights and a voice — where my story still matters.
So as much as I wish it had never been pushed this far, as unreal as it feels to be going through these events, I will not surrender. Not with everything that’s at stake.
I’ve been channeling my inner Paula Deen and indulging in Southern comfort foods. Banana pudding and lemon curd pudding? Yes please! Chocolate popcorn, potato salad, beer can chicken (though I used apple juice instead) … It’s feels really good to throw off all concerns about sugar and fat and just indulge in the fuel of life.
Besides, I was never the one who cared about reading ingredient labels anyway.
The weather is nice and I’ve been getting out a fair bit, going on nature walks and identifying bird song using a handy app I downloaded. I like how I have a better understanding of the world around me, not to mention the excitement of hearing a bird that’s marked as “uncommon” or “rare.” My kids and I also keep our eyes out for fish in the river, any other critters that we can spot, and plants that are interesting … I enjoy these excursions quite a bit.
I patched a hole in the back tire of my daughter’s bike. I haven’t done this sort of thing since I was a kid, so it was satisfying when I got the bicycle put back together and it worked … especially with getting the chain back onto the gears, since that was rather tricky for me. I like discovering this inner reserve of handiness that’s gone untapped over all these years, and it’s really boosting my confidence. It’s not that I couldn’t fix things, but rather that I was never allowed to before.
Occasionally, after all of these busy days of outings and improvements, I have days when I feel completely unmotivated to do anything. I’m doing my best to frame these as days of rest, and not judge myself by their existence. I’m rebuilding a lot right now, and it would be unfair to expect myself to keep doing so much every single day.
It is surprisingly hard to write about myself. The internet is full of people who go on and on about the ordinary things that they do, while here I am struggling with summarizing my weekly activities. I don’t believe that I have the “it” factor, so I’m not going to gain any attention through journal entries, but this is something that I want to do for myself. I grew up in a shadow, then married into a different shadow, and now I want to feel like I have the right to shine with my own light. No permission required.
Life doesn’t run a clear course It flows through from within It’s supposed to take you places and leave markings on your skin
And those marks are just a sign of something true you witnessed in your time Of something new, like the start of something fine
As a society, we tend to think of every moment spent on a failed venture as “wasted time.” Wasted potential. Wasted life.
So I remind myself that life doesn’t run a clear course through our external achievements. Every experience, every moment lived, every thought and feeling, is what makes up our lives — it flows through from within.
Yeah, I tried my best and failed catastrophically, but I learned a lot. My internal self grew and evolved. After I’m done licking my wounds and recovering from my disasters, I can get up and try something new. Something better.
You know perfectly well the bravado with which they present themselves to the world — it was the first thing that you saw about them, and probably what drew you to them in the first place. But as time passed by, you began to sense that fragility inside of them. The bragging and exaggerations began to seem more and more like a coping mechanism, to hide how easily they could break inside. There was so much about ordinary life that they couldn’t handle.
And you never wanted to break anyone.
So you helped to maintain their public image. After all, most people were complete strangers that you were likely to never see again, so it would be mean-spirited to demean someone you cared about over an exaggeration. You picked up the slack at home, taking on all the chores and obligations, while they seemed to spend so much time socializing and engaging in leisurely activities. Sometimes you resented them, but their fragility kept you from acting on it; you were the stronger one.
You can’t lash out at someone who’s so weak and vulnerable.
So you endure.
And the more you know them, the more childish they seem. Instead of equal partners, you’re the parent, constantly cleaning their messes and boosting their self-esteem. They even cry out, “Look at me!” and you reply, “Wow, good job!” Only you don’t feel it inside, because you know that they aren’t a child. They aren’t growing, and they won’t ever become anything more than what they are. They don’t take your words of encouragement as motivation to improve — they insist that they’ve reached perfection already. You tell them “good job” because it would break them if you didn’t.
You aren’t a mean person.
They never look at you. They never tell you “good job.” You work hard, you miss sleep, you devote every moment to trying to build them up, and they never seem to notice. On the other hand, they have huge reactions for every moment when you slip — and they extract every last ounce out of you without any forgiveness or leniency. You feel ignored and scrutinized at the same time. You have to be everything in your loneliness, and sometimes you wish that you were a literal robot free from your own emotions. It would be easier if you didn’t feel so much.
But you can’t leave, because they’re so fragile. You imagine them sitting in garbage and mold, wasting away without someone there to care for them. Who else would put up with this person once they learn the truth about them? You aren’t heartless.
You feel like a bad person for thinking that way.
Until the day when they tell you that they’re bored of you. They tell you that you held them back and wasted their life. They tell you that you abused them by being a separate person from them — but inside you know how much of yourself you lost to them. You know how much you sacrificed in trying to protect them from their own fragility.
It hurts. Deeply.
You then learn how many manipulative games they had been playing to keep you off balance. That time when it took them months to make you a copy of the house key, claiming that they kept forgetting because they were busy? Or when they went through that phase of talking in a quiet voice that was difficult to hear, only to insist that they were speaking normally? You begin to wonder if they were secretly hiding dishes then returning them to the drawers and cupboards, just to make you feel like you were losing it when you could never find what you needed. Maybe there was more truth to those paranoid moments of doubt than you realized at the time.
They’ve thrown you away, and you’re left wondering who you really are. You don’t know what’s real anymore, and you’re scared to think anything good about yourself. You feel drained and damaged. You don’t know what you want out of the future.
You learn that it’s called “narcissistic abuse,” and that there are a lot of other people out there who have gone through the same thing. For the first time in a long time, you no longer feel alone.
It was the first holiday after my first baby was born, and the moment I realized that I was now more than just myself. From that day on, Easter was about magic bunnies and egg hunts.
Last year, Easter happened less than two weeks before I was betrayed. That day reverberated through my mind as a protest, disbelieving that someone could hold my hand and tell me that I was their favorite person while planning on stabbing me in the back. Last Easter has been packaged up with the rest of the betrayal trauma, as a reminder how bad people weaponize good days.
And, with any luck, this Easter marks a New Beginning. I know what my True North is.
So far the day has been going well. The kids were excited for their Easter baskets, and they’ve completed the egg hunt. Next will be coloring eggs, followed by more egg salad than anyone wants to eat. What can I say? It’s tradition!
Unfortunately the kids and I woke up with a mild cold this morning, and the dry cough with itchy sinuses has been a bit of damper on the festivities.
I went and gussied up some of the old posts I made about my writing process that I’m still proud of.
It wasn’t exactly the most exciting thing to do, but those AI features made it much easier, and even gave me a chuckle with some of the quirky generated images. Will it matter at all? Heck if I know. I barely know what SEO even is, and I’m not all that convinced that it will do anything to boost my blog stats. But, at the very least, it makes me feel like a more attentive blogger,
And attentive bloggers blog more often. So there.
I want to write about myself more, and think about myself more. I feel like I’ve spent years listening to someone go on and on about himself, and every time I said anything like, “I have a dream too!” I was instantly shut down. “Whoa there. Getting full of yourself, aren’t you?”
But it isn’t egotistical to have dreams about where I want my life to go. Maybe I won’t end up in a big house on the bench of the mountain, but I can still watch the sunset glint off those enormous windows as I drive by and wonder what it would be like to live there. It’s not wrong to feel inspired to pursue success for myself.
It’s not wrong to believe that I have skills and talents. It’s not wrong to think about how I can use those skills and talents to make my way in the world. The Universe didn’t designate me to sit in the dark as a permanent audience member — I have a passion for writing that I want to share with the world, and I genuinely believe that I can offer something that others would enjoy.
And it’s not wrong for me to exist as a real person writing about my real experiences. “Dear diary, today I went with the kids to the park. The breeze was cold but the sun was hot, and the public restrooms are finally open for the season.” My thoughts and perceptions are valid, and I want the freedom to express them without wondering who might disagree with them.
I still have my own opinions and philosophies about writing, and I still want to write about them. Maybe soon enough, I’ll be able to take those old posts and rewrite them — expound on them — and compile something that could even be published as a “how to” type book. ~Writing With Autumn Rain~ Forward by ChatGPT
And maybe I’ll finally figure out why SEO matters.
I find it encouraging that my fiction writing is still performing the best in my blog statistics.
I’ve been working on overcoming the memory of that smug voice telling me that my writing ideas were cliched and immature. Despite that proclamation, I continued writing my ideas. Alice and the Warden? Me. The Scion Suit? My interpretation of a writing prompt. The Black Magus? Yup, that was me. I enjoyed writing my ideas immensely, and others have enjoyed reading them as well, so it doesn’t matter if they were “cliched” or “immature” — it isn’t about being the best of the best, it’s about personal satisfaction and having fun.
It wasn’t really my ideas that were the problem. Rather, it was the seed planted in my brain that made me feel like I had to seek a stamp of approval before I could write them. That deep insecurity and fear I always felt when I started a story that hadn’t been given the “green light” by someone else.
Yet that person who had propped himself up as the Gatekeeper of Quality left.
It might be difficult to understand if you haven’t been through this, but when someone deliberately inflicts an emotional wound so that they can provide the “cure,” that wound is still there after they leave. Real healing takes time and is very difficult, especially when you feel the withdrawal from the false cures they fed you. It hurts severely to acknowledge that they weren’t trying to help you improve, but instead deliberately keeping you dependent.
Despite knowing better on a cognitive level, it’s been terrifying to write without that stamp of approval.
I’ve switched back to writing with a pen in a notebook, but unfortunately my handwriting muscles aren’t what they used to be (I blame the years spent typing). It reminds me of being a teenager, secretly filling page after page with my characters in novels that will never see the light of day, though now my end goal is to publish. I haven’t given up on my dream of being a professional author; it’s always there in my mind through every moment of every day.
All I need to do is write without holding anything back.
I’ve reached the one-year anniversary of the night that I hit rock bottom.
The months that followed were the most excruciatingly painful of my entire life. It was like being eviscerated. Unanesthetized surgery on my soul itself. The manner in which I was forced to surrender my delusions and face reality was … sadistic. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Those were load-bearing delusions.
Then eventually as time passed and the dust settled, I began the psychological equivalent of learning how to walk again.
I have a long way to go.
Yet, the silver lining is that I have not only begun to contextualize, process, and understand the misfortunes of my adult life, but my childhood as well. I’ve realized that in light of the circumstances I grew up in, my rock bottom was inevitable without the cultural insights that weren’t available until recently. I accept that, and will do my part to pass on the lessons I learned.
After all, you must never blame yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know.
One year.
Still dirt poor. Still haven’t achieved my dreams. Still not even working on my fiction writing.
And that’s okay.
Because I’ve been sorting out which thoughts are mine and discarding the beliefs that aren’t. I’ve been challenging the foundational rules of my existence and declaring to the Universe, “I don’t want to live this way!”
I don’t want to be invisible, but I also don’t want the exhaustion that comes from being in the spot light. I’m searching for where the middle ground lies. I’m searching for where my authenticity is.
I’ve been feeling really good about my physical appearance lately.
I find it very affirming that divorced me has healthier coloring and less bloating. Divorced me is more confident in my own body. Divorced me is better at socializing with complete strangers.
Not that I’m claiming rampant improvements across the board. I still haven’t figured out a huge portion of my life, so being able to smile at my reflection in the mirror feels like a small win.
I think that I’ve been doing a lot of internal improvements, particularly with rewriting my internal self to embrace the idea that I don’t have to be invisible. I’ve been working to join the “warm social world,” and have been pleasantly surprised at how many people respond positively to my comments about the weather (and other various small talk topics). Instead of being constantly self-critical and internalizing far too much, I just aim to be friendly and curious, and let everything else be as it is.
Awhile ago I mentioned that I’ve been trying to emulate what I think a strong and admirable character would do in my shoes. I admit that I feel plenty of pressure to throw myself out there and pursue success (why haven’t you found a real job yet?), but I think it’s important to fix the parts of me that led me to rock bottom, so to speak. Otherwise I might end up playing out the same story with new costumes.
And when I think of myself as the bleeding heart who was terrified of the spotlight, I realize how inevitable my fate was.
Not that I want to stop being empathic and supportive. Rather, I know that I need to do a better job of letting people go when I get bad vibes from them — something I witnessed in myself more recently when I kept a conversation going with someone who I strongly felt like they had huge red flags surrounding them, and I absolutely hated talking to them. I probably should have ghosted them, but I kept feeling guilty every time I didn’t reply.
So I really want to internalize the idea that it’s not wrong to protect myself from people who clash with me. It’s not wrong to prioritize people who make me feel safe to be around.
I don’t have to be the one who’s always understanding. I don’t have to be the one who’s patient and never gives up. I don’t have to be anyone’s savior — and I have learned to acknowledge the hubris that drives that particular ideology in the first place.
Phrases like, “No one understands me” are red flags, not challenges. Don’t try to be better and prove otherwise. Save the empathy and support for someone who appreciates it.
By Autumn Rain 