It’s Been a Year . . .
It has been the most challenging year of my life, one that pushed me to the edges of devastation, despair, fear, panic, anxiety, and heartbreak. And yet, I am still standing.
Over these twelve months, I have felt every emotion a human being can feel. I have touched the depths of hopelessness in the very same weeks that I found glimmers of hope. I grieved a loss within the same 24 hours that I prayed for togetherness. I moved from anger to gratitude, back again, and then back again, so many times I lost count. I could feel safe in his arms one minute and want to run far away the next. The emotional whiplash and the shifting reality were more than I could bear on many days.
The thing about a deep betrayal of trust is that nothing is predictable. You cannot foresee what will soothe you or what will shatter you, what will spark hope or what will trigger a new wave of pain. Even now, a full year later, a fleeting thought at a stoplight nearly sent me spiraling into a panic attack last week.
But time has a way of softening the edges. The hard days are fewer now. My voice has grown louder, and my soul has grown softer. Once I could finally stand again, I learned to speak up about what I needed. I learned to shift from focusing on what I had to do to hold my marriage together to focusing on what I needed to hold myself together.
The truth is that there is no single fix. There is no magic sentence, apology, gesture, or promise. I told myself that if he would just do this or say that, maybe it would all be okay. Sometimes he did, but that did not heal the wound. I had to learn that forgiveness, rebuilding, and reclaiming my life had to come from inside me. Yes, there were things he needed to do and say, but none of them could make me whole. Maybe I will not ever be the same kind of whole again. But I am learning to forgive myself, and only I can begin to remove the armor I built around my heart.
In the same year, I was stretched far beyond my comfort zone in every way. I uncovered strength in places I did not know existed. Some days, strength simply meant getting out of bed and placing one foot in front of the other. Other days, I felt like a superwoman, like if I could survive this, I could survive anything. Sometimes both of those versions of me showed up in the very same day.
What carried me through was faith. Faith in God. Faith in my family. Faith, even when fragile, in my husband. And most importantly, faith in myself. On the last day of this incredibly difficult year, I am choosing to look at what I endured, what I survived, what I overcame, what I walked through, and what I gained in resilience and in faith.
I remind myself nearly every day that my track record of surviving is 100 percent.
