Choose Love
I will make no apologizes for not posting for months. Life has been a rollercoaster, each month a bit better than the last but to say that things are fixed or that I feel whole again is a lie. I'm not sure I'll ever feel whole again. Most days, even the very best ones, I feel like a piece of me is missing. I get through it. I put one step in front of the other and focus on whats right in front of me. I still have days where the world feels too big, where I feel like this is too much or that I'm not very good at life on the other side of divorce. Sometimes I feel like I need a hug so badly that it actually hurts. But here's the thing. I get up and out of bed every single day. And every single day I try and find something to love. There are days where I lose myself in whatever I'm doing and really live in the moment, forgetting for a few hours that my heart still aches if I think about all thats happened long enough. And there are days where I push so many feelings aside, showing the world a much more put together version of myself. On these days it's almost like watching my life as you would a movie. I'm physically present, I say things, I do things, I smile. But there is nothing behind any of it. These are the days that I haven't figured out how to get away from. They become fewer each month which I guess means progress is being made. They still hurt just as much though and that's made me wonder.....with something like divorce do you ever truly stop feeling sad about it? Does it ever not make your heart ache? I don't know the answer to that and in my case I can't imagine not feeling a little twinge of pain when something triggers a memory or when I have a bad day and all I could use is one of his hugs. But dammit I've made it this far and as sad as I may get for small chunks of time there is happiness in this life and for that I am forever thankful.
He and I still talk and spend time together. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable that we still are in touch and at this point I'm honestly not sure why. I get that from the outside he is the man who left. He hurt me, he broke up our little family, he made a choice that didn't agree with everyone. He made me cry more than I've cried before. And I get that if that's all you know of our story then you might not like him very much. I respect that. But here's the thing. He did all of those things and while he did them he was by my side to make sure I was going to be ok also. He took time to sit and let me yell at him. He held me when I didn't think I could get through another day. He made himself available to me and more than anything he listened. He listened to all my feelings and hurt and confusion. He offered his opinion when he could, always making sure to support me and what I needed in the moment. Is he perfect? No. But either are you or I. He is human. He made a choice for himself because he saw something that I wasn't willing to see just yet. He saw that we were losing "us".
We've always been "M & J". We've always been together and loved each other and everyone had always assumed we would be forever. But a lot of things happened over the years. We stopped listening to each other. We stopped dreaming together and instead started dreaming parallel. I got wrapped up in the sequence everyone seems to need to follow......date, get engaged, get married, move, start a family.....I wanted all of those things and more and he knew it. What I didn't do a great job of is making sure he knew I wanted those things with him and that the timing wasn't really my concern. I just loved him. In the last year of our marriage there were job stresses and we moved back in with my parents. We got a dog, one we both adore, but we added a responsibility that took away from us. When I look back at all the things we've done I can't help but wonder what would have happened if we just chose to love each other. What if we didn't give into the pressures of getting married? Or following the path everyone thinks they need to follow when they find someone they love? What if we just chose love? I'll never know but if I could miraculously go back and do it all again I would never miss a chance to show him the love I felt every day. I don't regret much but I do regret missing some of those simple moments of love.
And so we've come to present day. For those of you who follow me on Instagram you probably have noticed one of my hashtags is #chooselove. This isn't just to serve as a reminder to everyone that love is important. This is to show that love is everywhere. Love is in every day things with everyday people. I wake up and I make the choice to choose love. I show it to my family, to my friends, to my myself. If you talked to J he would tell you I tell him I love him every day and he says the same to me. This isn't my way of holding on to the past, of trying to get him to change his mind or prove to him that I love him. He knows that without me every needing to say anything. But here's the thing. Why not say it? Why not just say how you feel and be honest and let that truth be a part of your story? I will love him every single day until I am not on this earth and I love that I will get to do that. I will also choose to love myself. This one is a bit harder because its easy to see what you've done wrong or to blame yourself for life not looking as you assumed it would. I've made it this far and if you would have told me a year ago that I would be in this place I would have thought you were nuts. But I love my life. I love the people in it and the profession I've chosen. I love that I have choices now and that I see that the world isn't only about checking things off a list like getting married because "its probably time" or rushing to have a baby because you think thats what you are supposed to do next. I love that I get to do whatever I want and see whoever I want and love however I choose. J is a big part of my life and although the time we physically spend together is limited, he is always just a text away. He's been my person though all this when others haven't stepped up and shown me that they can take time out of their lives to help me with mine. So to those of you who don't understand, maybe look and see how much you tried to be there. I go where the love is. And a lot of love is shared by him.
So now that all of that is out of the way.....I actually sat down to write a post about vows. Tomorrow would have been our wedding anniversary and to be honest I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it. We were separated last year but chose to spend August 9th together. This year he's out of town and I'm here and all I can think about is not getting a hug from him tomorrow. That honestly might be the saddest part about it for me.
When we got married we wrote our own vows, choosing to forgo the traditional ones. We did this because we wanted to take vows that meant something, that we would live and love by. I ran across them last week in my email, searching for something else but having them pop up instead. I read them and it got me thinking. These vows everyone says.....what are they really? Promises? Hopes? Dreams? Ours certainly were....
"I am really excited to spend the rest of my life with you. To talk and to listen, to trust you, to love you, hold you, console you, delight you, amaze you and cherish you dearly through life's joys and sorrows. I promise as your husband/wife to share in our hopes, thoughts, and dreams as we build our lives together. May our lives ever be intertwined, our love continuing our growth together. May we build a home that is compassionate to all, full of respect and honor for others and each other. And may our home be forever filled with peace, happiness, and heart. My commitment to you is kept in faith, lived in hope, and made in love."
As I read them it occurred to me that we haven't broken our vows. We do a massive amount of talking and listening, we trust each other completely, we love, we hold, we console, we delight each other, amaze each other, and cherish each other. We do all these more authentically today then we ever have. We've absolutely been there through the joys and sorrows. We may be building different lives but they are intertwined and we say all the time about how this journey isn't over, how we still have things to do together. Our home was always full of respect for one another and as much as his choice hurts and may not have been what I ever wanted....I respect it and love that he is honoring his story. We have fought to keep the faith alive, we have hoped that this choice to continue our journey would be worth it and we've done it all because of love. Our vows were never broken. They have changed, everything has. But we stood up in front of the people we loved most and said these words and even through separating and wanting to give up and not being sure what will come tomorrow....despite all of that and more we have lived our lives and followed the vows we took. There is something rather extraordinary about that.
Tomorrow may feel harder than other days. My heart already aches thinking about it. But despite the ache and the tears that will more than likely fall, I am so incredibly grateful that this is my story. That I can still see the love in life and that my heart is starting to open back up to dreaming. J and I chose love when there were so many other options that society would have felt more comfortable with. But for us love was the only option on the table. So I will close this post with this....
Take time today and love. You can love a person, an animal, a place. You can love your bed or a book or an iced coffee. But just take a minute and really sit and think about the love. Think about where love has gotten you, how it has helped you grow, how you can show more of it. In the end it isn't about how many tears I've cried but rather how many of those tears have been because of love. Tomorrow I will not celebrate a wedding anniversary but I will celebrate the love that was vowed that day and the strength we have both had to see that love through, allowing us to still be "M & J" in a new and improved way.
#chooselove,
Meag
He and I still talk and spend time together. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable that we still are in touch and at this point I'm honestly not sure why. I get that from the outside he is the man who left. He hurt me, he broke up our little family, he made a choice that didn't agree with everyone. He made me cry more than I've cried before. And I get that if that's all you know of our story then you might not like him very much. I respect that. But here's the thing. He did all of those things and while he did them he was by my side to make sure I was going to be ok also. He took time to sit and let me yell at him. He held me when I didn't think I could get through another day. He made himself available to me and more than anything he listened. He listened to all my feelings and hurt and confusion. He offered his opinion when he could, always making sure to support me and what I needed in the moment. Is he perfect? No. But either are you or I. He is human. He made a choice for himself because he saw something that I wasn't willing to see just yet. He saw that we were losing "us".
We've always been "M & J". We've always been together and loved each other and everyone had always assumed we would be forever. But a lot of things happened over the years. We stopped listening to each other. We stopped dreaming together and instead started dreaming parallel. I got wrapped up in the sequence everyone seems to need to follow......date, get engaged, get married, move, start a family.....I wanted all of those things and more and he knew it. What I didn't do a great job of is making sure he knew I wanted those things with him and that the timing wasn't really my concern. I just loved him. In the last year of our marriage there were job stresses and we moved back in with my parents. We got a dog, one we both adore, but we added a responsibility that took away from us. When I look back at all the things we've done I can't help but wonder what would have happened if we just chose to love each other. What if we didn't give into the pressures of getting married? Or following the path everyone thinks they need to follow when they find someone they love? What if we just chose love? I'll never know but if I could miraculously go back and do it all again I would never miss a chance to show him the love I felt every day. I don't regret much but I do regret missing some of those simple moments of love.
And so we've come to present day. For those of you who follow me on Instagram you probably have noticed one of my hashtags is #chooselove. This isn't just to serve as a reminder to everyone that love is important. This is to show that love is everywhere. Love is in every day things with everyday people. I wake up and I make the choice to choose love. I show it to my family, to my friends, to my myself. If you talked to J he would tell you I tell him I love him every day and he says the same to me. This isn't my way of holding on to the past, of trying to get him to change his mind or prove to him that I love him. He knows that without me every needing to say anything. But here's the thing. Why not say it? Why not just say how you feel and be honest and let that truth be a part of your story? I will love him every single day until I am not on this earth and I love that I will get to do that. I will also choose to love myself. This one is a bit harder because its easy to see what you've done wrong or to blame yourself for life not looking as you assumed it would. I've made it this far and if you would have told me a year ago that I would be in this place I would have thought you were nuts. But I love my life. I love the people in it and the profession I've chosen. I love that I have choices now and that I see that the world isn't only about checking things off a list like getting married because "its probably time" or rushing to have a baby because you think thats what you are supposed to do next. I love that I get to do whatever I want and see whoever I want and love however I choose. J is a big part of my life and although the time we physically spend together is limited, he is always just a text away. He's been my person though all this when others haven't stepped up and shown me that they can take time out of their lives to help me with mine. So to those of you who don't understand, maybe look and see how much you tried to be there. I go where the love is. And a lot of love is shared by him.
So now that all of that is out of the way.....I actually sat down to write a post about vows. Tomorrow would have been our wedding anniversary and to be honest I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it. We were separated last year but chose to spend August 9th together. This year he's out of town and I'm here and all I can think about is not getting a hug from him tomorrow. That honestly might be the saddest part about it for me.
When we got married we wrote our own vows, choosing to forgo the traditional ones. We did this because we wanted to take vows that meant something, that we would live and love by. I ran across them last week in my email, searching for something else but having them pop up instead. I read them and it got me thinking. These vows everyone says.....what are they really? Promises? Hopes? Dreams? Ours certainly were....
"I am really excited to spend the rest of my life with you. To talk and to listen, to trust you, to love you, hold you, console you, delight you, amaze you and cherish you dearly through life's joys and sorrows. I promise as your husband/wife to share in our hopes, thoughts, and dreams as we build our lives together. May our lives ever be intertwined, our love continuing our growth together. May we build a home that is compassionate to all, full of respect and honor for others and each other. And may our home be forever filled with peace, happiness, and heart. My commitment to you is kept in faith, lived in hope, and made in love."
As I read them it occurred to me that we haven't broken our vows. We do a massive amount of talking and listening, we trust each other completely, we love, we hold, we console, we delight each other, amaze each other, and cherish each other. We do all these more authentically today then we ever have. We've absolutely been there through the joys and sorrows. We may be building different lives but they are intertwined and we say all the time about how this journey isn't over, how we still have things to do together. Our home was always full of respect for one another and as much as his choice hurts and may not have been what I ever wanted....I respect it and love that he is honoring his story. We have fought to keep the faith alive, we have hoped that this choice to continue our journey would be worth it and we've done it all because of love. Our vows were never broken. They have changed, everything has. But we stood up in front of the people we loved most and said these words and even through separating and wanting to give up and not being sure what will come tomorrow....despite all of that and more we have lived our lives and followed the vows we took. There is something rather extraordinary about that.
Tomorrow may feel harder than other days. My heart already aches thinking about it. But despite the ache and the tears that will more than likely fall, I am so incredibly grateful that this is my story. That I can still see the love in life and that my heart is starting to open back up to dreaming. J and I chose love when there were so many other options that society would have felt more comfortable with. But for us love was the only option on the table. So I will close this post with this....
Take time today and love. You can love a person, an animal, a place. You can love your bed or a book or an iced coffee. But just take a minute and really sit and think about the love. Think about where love has gotten you, how it has helped you grow, how you can show more of it. In the end it isn't about how many tears I've cried but rather how many of those tears have been because of love. Tomorrow I will not celebrate a wedding anniversary but I will celebrate the love that was vowed that day and the strength we have both had to see that love through, allowing us to still be "M & J" in a new and improved way.
#chooselove,
Meag
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