Long story short, I separated from my husband two years ago, but never fully let him go because of a paralyzing guilt, last night he called my 6 times and texted me more because he found out I was seeing someone and we aren’t even divorced. I have told him I wanted a divorce in the past because I THINK I do, but we have never made the steps toward it. One day Im not sure Im making the right decision, the next I think I am. I have been dating “behind his back” even though we see each other maybe twice a month and text randomly throughout the day. I could never be honest with him and let him go. I need advice? I wrote this today in the recent events of last night…somehow it feels better!

The “S” curve….

I always say “I wish someone would write my story so I knew what to expect.” The more I think about this the more I wish it to be true. Somedays I wish my life had background music. Music tells more of a story than the blank stare in someones eyes. Life would be so much easier if I could read my story and follow it like a plot line. Im tired of the twists and turns I create in my own story. Why cant life be simple? Why cant life follow a straight, bold, confident line? Why aren’t feelings exactly what they are without any question or needing any reassurance. I look back on my life in the last ten years beginning with meeting my “husband”. We were young and I was thriving on the excitement of being young and free. Long distance was our story from day one after meeting for a week before I moved to Minneapolis to fulfill my dream of entering the booming beauty career. My life seemed so “straight” at the time ,a solid straight line. I knew what I wanted to do and honestly I was good at it. I felt and still do feel like I had the natural knack for doing hair. Upon entering graduation date things with my boyfriend at the time seemed flawless. I always missed him, loved when he would come stay with me for the weekends and dreaded his departure date. I’ll never forget the night he moved in with me into my small 500 square foot studio apartment. It was an excitement you only get once for the first big step into a relationship. After moving his things in that night it was our first real night together and the dreaded feeling of him HAVING to go home was gone, he was home, we were home.
I continued to go to school landing an amazing job at a training salon where my ladder to success within the business was growing step by step. Colorado was a place I could guarantee I would never call home until he found a job in Glenwood Springs, CO. I couldn’t imagine leaving behind a life I was building with him in Minneapolis and a family that I had to imagine leaving. I made the decision and packed up my life in the cities to fulfill his dream of living in the mountains. A 17 hour drive that seemed to take years brought me to a place of fear and regret instantly. However, this was no way to live so I grabbed life by the horns and found a job at a small, three chaired AVEDA salon where the stylists became more than co-workers, but my new family. I engaged in their life style, their hobbies and most of all a new perspective on life. I could not regret my decision anymore in order to live my life. We lived in a room, one room, with strangers I knew nothing about. Again, realizing this was no way to live, those strangers became friends that introduced me into a network of people I was certain would stay in my life forever. After no longer being able to live in ONE room, we moved into our very first apartment. This had to be the second most exciting time in my life. I finally had a place that I made a home, our home. I moved jobs, made new friends, found new hobbies and Carbondale was now my home. I slowly morphed into a small town girl that no longer loved chain restaurants, coffee shops and shopping. I found my happiness in being able to go to small town gatherings, coffee shops and acquired a mountain girl lifestyle. There was so much to see and so much happiness and honesty in the mountains. There was never a place i couldn’t go to reflect and escape, the opportunities were endless.
Ill never forget, but hard to remember the 4th of July shortly after moving out to the mountains. A breakfast surrounded by outdoor living, a gondola ride to the top of the world and an engagement later, we were celebrating with a bottle of champagne and telling the world about our engagement. Facebook official created reassuring and positive comments from everyone I loved in my world. Life continued on, wedding planning began and soon a wedding would be taking place. I’m not sure if my memory escaped me or if it’s reality, but I cannot seem to remember much wedding planning. The venue, music selection, colors, etc. seemed to all fall into place. Maybe movies and social media ruin the reality of wedding planning, but it seems that it should be the MOST exciting time and something that every girl dreams of doing. I don’t remember feeling any of this. Wedding day drew near and a road trip home to marry my husband was in full force. Another reason I may not be normal or maybe normal isn’t the right word, but I cannot remember feeling like my wedding day was THE day, the very best day. I wasn’t unhappy, I was happy. I think I was happy. Maybe it was the whole event that made me feel “nothing” of great purpose and it’s a flash in time but why was I not feeling like what I would assume they do in the movies. Im not sure if I was more excited for something changing in my life and doing what people do in their lives by getting married, having kids, buying a house etc. or if I was playing by the rules. This is what you’re supposed to do? Of course I loved him, we were best friends. Best friends who got married and never had a bad time together, ever. Everything we did was fun and engaging. When is that enough to hold two people together for the rest of their lives? Is it enough? There has to be more in the equation! Eventually, we were best friends and roommates. We had a very active social circle, a very active life but something had to be missing? To this day, 5 years later, I still cannot figure out what happened or what was missing? It’s easy to blame failure on multiple things….him, me, moving, distractions, a lack of trying. What is the root cause of a failed marriage? When did my desire to be alone and explore myself destroy my marriage?
I think a lot, I’m always in my head…I am the only one who is in my head. So why cant this be resolved. Moving out two years ago was a roller coaster of emotions. I plot in my head what my life will be like, but have yet to begin that canvas. Going back to school was one of the best decisions I have made. No one knows me, I can be whoever I want to be. I was “Hannah; wife, hairdresser, social butterfly, happy and motivated”. If I were standing on the outside looking in I can guarantee I would not think of “me” as anything of the great. I have lied, cheated, made selfish decisions and all at what cost? So I can try and find happiness in a place I don’t know. I have become unable to be alone and at the cost of many failed relationships. They say you cannot make anyone happy or be happy until you find your own happiness, but what is that? I assume its like the movies, and maybe this is whats wrong. I assume it’s the relationships I see everyday in front of me and crave that. I used to be that relationship, my marriage used to reflect that until it all changed. We became the distant couple that had empty stares at one another.
My marriage; I read recently that a sign of falling apart is the characteristic in a marriage of “Was I ever really married?” I have done enough weddings in the industry to know what a marriage looks like. Shared interests, finances, goals and dreams. I remember being two months late on a car payment and thinking, I couldn’t possibly ask Michael to help me out, thats his money and this is my car, my problem. What is that? That is not marriage. Maybe it was because when we got married we lived in a place that would not be home forever so we could not make the leaps and jumps of what newly weds do. We could not buy a house (financially or locationally). We never shared finances, we shared a life but not each other lives. I wore a ring, he wore a ring, we lived together and looked married. I felt alone, alone in a place I no longer wanted to call home. I wanted to be home, my home. I wanted to accept a job in Minneapolis but I didn’t hold the college degree, I didn’t make the money to support us, I had a job and a career that relied on someone else. I will never remember when “Michael had to have a job because he had a college degree and was the money.” This was not my money. Of course I couldn’t afford rent, but I loved exactly who I was. He put the roof over my head but at the expense of my happiness. I became obsessed with a desire to DO ME, at the cost of my marriage. I envisioned a life in MY apartment that would be a home and safe haven for me and I could create exactly who I wanted to be.
I became accustomed to being alone…his passions out weighed my need for a husband and independence came creeping in naturally so. I spent holidays alone because it was “opening day” or “closing day”. I began to find new passions to fulfill the emptiness that I would begin to become obsessed with and turned the emptiness into independence. I made friends that would fill a void I was missing in my marriage. I became so independent that I no longer needed or craved a relationship with my husband, and for that I will never forgive. I take the blame for a failed marriage because of this, because someone had to. I wanted freedom and I realized over the years that only I can provide a life I wanted. I wanted a life with a person, a person who made my feel full, not empty. I began a life of searching for myself while the slopes had all of the answers for Michael. I wanted a place like this, so I found freedom.
I will never forget the feeling of “I just don’t want to wake up because when I sleep there are no feelings, I feel nothing”, why is this a way to live? There are so many feelings I craved feeling and being asleep had become my favorite feeling. I became unmotivated and depressed. No one really knows what depression is….I can guarantee I hit the bottom of depression but it’s different for everyone. Failure had become my depression and it was RAW and it was crippling.
One thing that scares me the most….my recklessness. I have become reckless with not only my own life and feelings, but those of other people. How can I be SO reckless with someone else’s heart, HOW? Not only of Michael but other people. I think and am becoming to know that there is something wrong with me? What is wrong with me? I have lied and hurt people I couldn’t imagine not having in my life, and for that reason alone I have lost people. I admire the strength of people who know what they want and just DO it. Not in a selfish way, but in a way that will satisfy their lives and they will move on and be happy. I never got married to get divorced, I never got married to ruin someone else, but this is what I’ve done. I have a fear of being the bad guy, and with this fear I have become the bad guy. I reinforce him because it makes me feel better knowing that it makes him feel better, but to do what? So for a few hours a day I don’t feel like the bad guy and he’s okay. He deserves better than to be okay, he deserves someone who can love him how he loves me…and for this I have decided it is time to set him free…time to quit playing games emotionally and stand up and be a person who can let him go at the sacrifice of my own “happiness” and uncertainty.
The decision to move back home to my happy place was made and I was doing it with or without him. It took our marriage falling apart for him to finally understand how important this was to me. Our marriage took the hit, I took the hit, he did too. With no regrets, I am back to my place with a family within a days travel, my support. No one will ever understand the place I am in, or why I do what I do. It can only be put as simple as “sometimes I think lying is protecting.” Sometimes a lie can provide comfort to someone at the expense of my reputation and feelings of “feeling bad.” However, what this has done is the opposite. If only I could stop feeling bad. I crave the day that I don’t have to cover things up and this time has come. It has ruined trust with people I need in my life and maybe it will take years to repair, but Im doing me and doing me is going to be the best thing I can do, if it’s all I can do.
What life and lessons have taught me; do you, even if it means you will lose people along the way. Life is what you make of it, you have one life. You are given one shot.
We all make mistakes, you either learn from them, grow from them or repeat the same mistakes day after day. This does not make you a bad person, it makes you a person.
Don’t worry about what other people think of you. The best quote I know is “You have no business knowing what someone thinks of you.” This I hold true. Maybe I’m the bad guy, Ive made mistakes, I’ve hurt people. I am judged for my actions and decisions, so be it! Im human, we all mess up. Behind everything and every action is a reason. Maybe others wont understand that reason or agree with it, and maybe they will even tell you. Stand up and move on!
Quit looking for relationships you see in movies or read in books. Take a relationship and create that, it’s work. It takes two people, not one and not one and a half. No more hiding, lying or fabricating a life that is not true. Do you!
Take critics with a grain of salt, they are not you. Until you are in my head and in my heart, you cannot judge. You can develop whatever thoughts you want, keep them to yourself. They are your own thoughts. No one will never know why someone does, says and feels the things they do. So stop making people feel bad! Never make someone feel bad…you don’t know what that will do to them.
Take pride in things that bring you happiness. I know that I am an amazing daughter, aunt, friend and person. I can be an amazing wife someday, but life did not provide me with that desire right now. I was an amazing wife until I no longer felt the need to be a “wife” or felt that I was needed as a wife.
Life is an S curve, trial and error. It is not a storybook or a fairy tale or a movie. It’s my life, it’s my confusion and my feelings. It’s what I make of it. Learn from your mistakes, or don’t but DEFINITELY don’t apologize for this. Trail and error, you live and you learn but don’t stop living or learning. Do what you can to be okay, everyone is going to be okay, Im going to be okay!