Imagine you're the captain of a 19th century whaling ship. You've been tossed on a hurricane for an unmarked amount of time, and now the seas are subsiding but it's dark and you are so storm-tossed you don't know where you are. Supplies are low, your ship has been damaged, and your sailors are tired and scared.
In the darkness you see a lighthouse. Do you head straight for it? No. Because here's what you know about lighthouses:
- They mark the shore, not necessarily a safe place to land your ship - The shore is often approached by shallows that can be rocky or marked with sandbars, both of which are dangerous to ships - Lighthouses generally are placed on fairly barren spots that are chosen for their visibility at sea rather than their resources for human comfort. (So no resources for resting your weary crew)
BUT, if you see the lighthouse, you know it marks the boundary between land and sea. You know that if when the skies clear you'll be able to take your bearings and maybe even send a rowboat to shore to find out where you are. When you see the lighthouse, you know that YOUR CONDITIONS HAVE CHANGED.
Fear is a LIGHTHOUSE. It is the barrier between one state and another. In your case, it's the barrier between you living stuck, worrying about your crazy H (and yes, he's CRAZY, even you can see that and you're trying to deal with him as though he's really rational and he's not) and you living free as the authentic Ss06 that you haven't really had yet the opportunity to be as an adult.
Divorce is a rock or a sandbar. Or a grumpy crewmember who threatens mutiny. It is not the lighthouse.
Through the second half of my marriage, there were a lot of things i wanted to explore in life: I wanted to be more intentional about our finances and general consumption. I wanted to be more spiritual. I wanted to lead the kids towards having less stuff and more experiences. I wanted to travel more. H put his nose in the air at all of those and vibrated between mocking me and sulking. He undermined me at every opportunity and was very passive-aggressive about never evolving or growing.
He's left me. I have done everything I could. Now all that life I wanted to explore, that I thought I'd given up because I was committed to being married to him -- I'm free to explore that and to find a life that feels authentic to me. I am free to NOT be ambitious in my career if I want (I am a little ambitious, but it's part of a greater whole, rather than a goal in itself). There's a whole life beyond that fear that I can be embrace. I'm not going to let the message of the lighthouse be that the rocks are too scary for me to land my ship and find out what land I'm in.
Ss, you've already been tremendously strong. You KNOW that life exists after your husband is gone. When you wake up in the morning, what will your attitude be? You can fear. Those won't go away just because you say "I don't want to be afraid." But you can live through them as you've lived through everything else and realize that your life will still go on and you can choose how rich it will be.
I wish you'd stop being embarrassed about working at Banana. I wish you'd own it. You've made a choice that's good for you. If your friends are too pearl-clutchingly shallow to think that was awesome of you (and too dim to realize it's temporary), then leave them behind and move forward to find friends who are more authentic. You deserve richness in your life. Find ways to provide it. Think about your LIFE, not the markers in it that come from having been storm-tossed.
One more thing... one of my friends lived through her parents' divorce when she was 5. She saw her dad being physically abusive to her mom. This terrified her for YEARS. Do you know how strong her mom was? She refused to take any spousal support. She had been a SAHM for however many years and had I think three? kids. She got a job as a secretary -- best she could do. She worked her way up to being VP of a BIG company. Sometimes along the way my friend and her siblings didn't really have enough to eat. When my friend was 14 she got her hand very badly broken at school and had to wait in the nurse's office 5 hours till her mom could get away from the office to take her to the ER (and then she endured 8 hours of surgery to rebuild her hand).
What does my friend remember about her mom? That she was STRONG. Life was sometimes hard, and I'm sure my friend complained as a child, but her mom was strong, she was present for her (even when she couldn't get away from work) and they are tremendously close now. (Coincidentally her mom met and married a man who still treats her like a queen and is the love of her life). See where the lighthouse can lead, not just you, but also your D?
Be sparkly and beautiful today, Ss. Be yourself.
Me42, H40 D12, S8, S7 A revealed: 7/13 Sep 4/14; Agreed to D 1/15
