Jeans from High School

14 years ago today I was bedridden. It was Cinqo de Mayo, one of my favorite party days.

On April 11th 2006, my first husband Jim, after acting weird for a few days had told me he thought he wanted a divorce. That was a Tuesday.  I remember he was acting weird the previous Friday and then through the weekend.  Not coming to bed, being secretive.  I finally had gotten up enough nerve to ask him what was going on.  “I’m not happy,” he said.

I was 46.  I was determined we’d fix things. Counseling!  I’d always wanted it.  He didn’t.  Surely this was a time for working together.  It wasn’t.

And so it was 4 1/2 weeks later, on Cinqo de Mayo I learned we were no longer going to be a “we.”  I had rolled over to hug him in bed about 2:30 am.  He woke up out of a full sleep to tell me it was over.  Got up and walked out of the bedroom.

While he was happily out partying on this super fun day, I was in the bed barely able to breathe. Abandonment issues I didn’t even know I had came up and out like an exploding volcano. I found myself instantly devastated. Paralyzed.  I couldn’t eat.  I couldn’t move.  I was essentially in the fetal position that day and more after…

I usually experience anniversary feelings. They typically come out of the blue and I’m suddenly transported back to a time long gone, feeling the feeling from back then.

That didn’t happen this year.

But I will never forget this day in my history.

This picture of me is triumphant and awful all at the same time. I was such a nervous wreck from our separation, I’d stopped eating. Consequently I lost so much weight I was able to fit into my jeans from high school nearly 30 years later. So triumphantly I could wear the jeans but only at the cost of tragedy.

In another post I will expand upon how, even at the depths of my despair I was able to access the tiniest of sparks within me.  And how over the next weeks and months, I worked to build myself back up so I would be stronger than I was going into the experience.

And now I still look at life’s most trying times as times to grow me, to fill me with wisdom…so that I can share what got me through with someone else as I reach for her hand to help her through her own hell….

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