After two years of fairly consistent blogging, I stopped six years ago. As I think about it, I can’t remember why I stopped blogging. But, as I reflect on the events of the past six years, I can see that I must have had some sort of knowing, that I would need to conserve all of my energy to survive the emotional and mental toll the next six years would bring.

I discovered I was married to a person with a severe problem with alcohol, a compulsive lying habit, sexual addiction, attempted suicides and mental health issues stemming from childhood and adult abuse from his birth family.

Both of my parents passed in our home. My dad died after 30 years of coping with COPD. My mom died 20 months later from what I am sure was a broken heart.

There were global events we all experienced. Covid. Political chaos. Civil unrest.

The death of our 3 dogs and my parent’s cat we inherited after their passing. The knowledge of our youngest being gay. The marriage of our oldest. The end of homeschooling our children for the past 24 years. Just a shit load of very heavy stuff.

Somehow, I stumbled through all of this but I felt as if I was in a trance. I had somehow removed myself from each event. I saw them as someone else’s experience/trauma and myself as merely an observer. A bystander. I sequestered my emotions about these events to a place deep within because I thought they were insignificant in comparison to what others were experiencing. It is like the emotions showed up and I immediately (without thought) halted them in their tracks and sent them packing.

And packing they did. They packed pounds and pounds and pounds of weight onto my body. The self-applied pressure of trying to be strong for everyone, also resulted in dangerously high blood pressure. Two years of drastic changes to try to reduce both, had mixed results. Blood pressure is much better but the weight has only managed to increase. This has since lead to what I can best describe as a form of melancholy. Or is it c-PTSD? Or depression? Or…? Whatever it was (maybe still is a little) it has made it hard for me to find joy in most activities and hard to keep or even get motivated. It can feel like I am just being carried by the flow of life. A leaf floating on the water as it moves downstream.

Have I failed at dealing with life? Part of me says yes but another part of me is starting to see that I was just doing the best I could with the knowledge and resources I had. The one thing I never stopped doing through it all was to continue to try. To continue to seek out information. To continue to attempt to do and be better. There were some helpful people, articles, books that I seemed to find at just the right time and there was a lot of self-doubt. I hit a lot of walls and was given some very harmful and debilitating advice along the way. My confidence was shot to hell.

And then I stumbled upon the quote I have had on my website all along…

“Believe in Yourself. Have Faith in Your Abilities. Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy.” – Norman Vincent Peale

Things are far from perfect and my marriage is still going. My heart aches for the losses of people, pets, expectations and lost time. Each day takes effort and icky thoughts are always vying for attention. The weight remains but I’m tired of fighting it and I simply eat whole foods and move my body. For now, I am learning how to feel the emotions when they arise. Finding compassion for myself. Realizing that even if the events were second-hand to me (I am learning that not all were), my experience of them was first-hand and no less significant in how they affected me. I am learning that my feelings matter.

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