You see, I had a plan. Get married, have a career, have
kids, live happily ever after. Fool proof – all I had to do was keep my husband,
boss and kids happy and everything would work out. But it didn’t and about 20
months ago my husband of 20 years filed for divorce. So I made a new plan. Make
my house into a home, create a new family unit of 3, make the kids okay despite
having a “broken home” and try to recover financially. I spent all of last
summer making the house mine, establishing a new culture for our family and
trying desperately to heal my boys. Next on the list – finances. I’m not sure if
you know this but divorce is expensive and so is being a single mom. My brain
was constantly moving with ideas of how to save money and make money so my kids
would be protected and still get to do everything they had when we were a
family of four.
And then, like so many times before, my life took a detour.
I met a guy. He knew it was my first date since being divorced – my first “first”
date in over 25 years. I informed him I wasn’t looking for anything – I was
just fine on my own thank you and that was how I intended to live out the rest
of my days (great start, right?) Besides, my focus was on fixing my family and
making us financially secure and there could be no deviations from the plan. I
had work to do and people to take care of. I had RESPONSIBILITIES. I had no
time for play. Yet he kept hanging around. I got used to him being there. He
patiently kept waiting for me to give him something I didn’t have available.
I think every season gives us challenges to overcome and opportunities to grow. You would think by now I would have learned that I don’t get to create the playlist for my life. Learning how to walk again and accepting my body’s limitations (*work in progress*) after major surgery – not on the playlist. Trying to save a marriage – not on the playlist. Divorce – definitely not on the playlist. Doing it on my own – not on the playlist. Who picked these shitty songs?
But after about 4 years of surprise twists, I thought I was finally in charge of the direction my life was going to take. I could move things anywhere I wanted in my house. My kids and I could make plans on our own. My house was safe from conflict and anger (sibling rivalry excluded.) When I checked my bank account, I knew where my money was going. I was in control. And then someone hit shuffle on the playlist and a love song came up and I didn’t know what to do with that.
I look at all of these people on Facebook and Instagram and they make falling in love look so easy. It looks like such a happy time for them – bliss, belonging, finding their person. I was so jealous. I, on the other hand, was like a bull in a china shop, bumping into the shelves, breaking expensive dishes, looking frantically for the exit so I could get the hell out. Love equals fear for me. Love means I have to do a bunch of healing work I didn’t know I had to do. It means confronting memories and challenging what I thought to be true. And there is no plan. There is no neat and tidy list of items for me to tackle one by one. These traumas pop up out of nowhere and I usually take one look at them and say, no thank you, I’ve had enough – let’s just tuck that feeling back inside and go for a run. (Please see paragraph 3 about major surgery – clearly I couldn’t outrun my feelings anymore.)
I questioned whether it was too soon. I told my therapist I just wasn’t capable of loving someone – other than my kids, friends and family of course. I was positive that I was broken and really, why inflict that on someone who is a good person. My therapist would counter with words of wisdom like, “how long do you plan to stay in that prison you’ve created,” and “so you’d like to keep getting the same results in life.” (My therapist is amazing and unfortunately she is not taking new clients.) And probably because she knows me so well, she knows I don’t back down from a challenge. Yes, it may take me some time to get there, but telling me that my choice is the easy way of status quo or the hard way that sucks but will give me a different kind of life, I’m going to choose the hard way. I will choose pain and discomfort over fear any day. And I was scared to death of love.
Love meant I’d have to confront the yuck that is stacked in my brain like a bunch of apples – when you take out one memory, the others tumble down too and now you have a bunch of bruised apples and an angry grocery store clerk. But I knew that I’d have to start sometime and whether it was now with a great guy or 10 years later, the hard work had to be done. I don’t step away from a challenge if the prize is worth it. And people seem to think love is worth it. Slowly I started to lean in. I challenged what I knew to be true and it turns out it wasn’t.
My goals this year were supposed to be financially and professionally driven – areas where I felt confident and in control – that was the plan. Instead I started the work of figuring out how to trust and love. So far it has proven to be harder than starting a new business but I’m hoping it will make me richer in the end. It has taken all of my extra mental energy that I have left over at the end of the day. I have put other goals on hold to work on this one that I never had on my radar. I have cried more than I ever expected I would as I rumbled through the mental scar tissue and created new truths. But one of my mantras is nothing worth doing is easy. I ask a lot of questions. I do a lot of thinking. I am rewriting the messaging. It is taking me some time. But people say love is worth it. I am trusting they are right.
Jenny’s Life Soundtrack Playlist
Fix You – Coldplay
Unstoppable – Sia
Titanium - David Guetta and Sia
Dig In – Lenny Kravitz
Lose Yourself – Eminem
Run the World (Girls) – Beyonce
I Should Have Known It – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
You Can’t Always Get What You Want – The Rolling Stones
Beautiful – Christina Aguilera
Praying – Kesha
Glorious – Macklemore
Today – Smashing Pumpkins
Nobody But You – Blake Shelton featuring Gwen Stefani
