You know the feeling you get in your stomach when you’re riding a roller coaster? You’re at the very tippy top and know the cart is just about to go flying down the track any minute……suddenly you’re flying through the air with just a hunk of metal under your butt and a flimsy seatbelt strapped across your chest. Everything in the upper half of your body jolts and you are nauseated, exhilarated and terrified all at once. I don’t like roller coasters. Little did I know, my life would become one.
I will never forget the feeling. The roller coaster ride had begun long before this day. In fact, the ride began the day we said ‘I do’. We were always arguing, always fussing. He was needy and I was intolerant. It was not a good match. I had listened to the book about knowing when your marriage is over and how to rescue it. The Gottman method and his four horsemen – criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. All four of those horsemen were galloping through our home. I knew it was over, I just didn’t know how to say goodbye.
The message on Facebook from a stranger I glimpsed at one evening left me sitting at the tippy top of that roller coaster ride until I could get dinner cleaned up and put my son to bed.
I went out to my porch to enjoy my wine in solace. The front porch is my haven. Sitting there gives me peace. That night, there would not be peace in my home, my mind or in my life for many weeks to come.
The message began, “Hi Betsy. I met… (my husband) a couple months ago online and we have been out a couple of times – I just would like to make sure you and he are truly separated so as not to cause any problems or disrespect. Hope you don’t mind me reaching out. “
The metal under my butt flew right out from under me and my heart dove into my toes. I was afraid I might throw up. All the blood drained from my face. I wanted to scream and curse and beat the shit out of that dumbass in the house. I was also afraid. Afraid of what I might do to him. Afraid of my future. Afraid for my son whose father just betrayed his mother. Afraid for my daughter who now has never had a stable male role model in her life. Even afraid of how my husband would survive without me. I knew at that very moment, I could choose to crumble or I could survive. I chose to survive.
This blog is about survival. In fact, it is about more than survival. It is about blooming in the face of adversity. More than my story there are thousands, no, millions of us who have one version or another of the same roller coaster ride. Surviving, thriving and blooming as a middle-aged woman, starting and standing again.
