A time capsule was opened yesterday, videos made on old TDK 8mm cassettes and transferred to a flash drive. Six hours of memories, watching my daughters grow from newborns, to celebrating milestones. It was super heartwarming, but also incredibly sad. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is a weighty tome.
You could see it in my eyes, the complete and utter misery. Pleasant exchanges between a husband and a wife that lack any emotional connection whatsoever. Truth is, I became disillusioned early on by my husband’s extracurricular sex life. I knew of his propensity for promiscuity before we ever became a couple. I was just a stupid fool believing marriage and children would change him.
My first inkling that he had stepped out of bounds was when I was pregnant with our first child. The neon signs, red flags, gut feelings and evidence were all there—lipstick stains, missing condoms, lame excuses. He eventually owned up to one indiscretion and by that time I had a five week old and a twenty-two month old, so what choice did I have but to, unhappily, soldier on.
Postpartum depression wrapped me in its dark embrace and kept me dependent on medication that propped me up, but numbed my soul, for years. As I watched pieces of my life unfold on the screen before me, I was deeply disturbed by how much of my life was lost. So much of it I simply don’t remember. What should have been a time of immeasurable joy and fascination—raising my beautiful daughters, was largely erased due to depression and years of taking antidepressants. Add alcohol to the mix and I’m surprised I can remember my own name, but hey—the marriage kept humming.
After twelve years, I’d had enough, so I said when. I shudder to think what might have been, if I’d stayed “for the sake of the kids.” This year, I will have been divorced longer than I was married, and it has taken another failed relationship, a shit ton of trauma and five years of healing to stand here today...happier and healthier than I’ve ever been. It is a time of immeasurable joy and fascination, and I am drenched in every single miraculous moment of it!
Namasté