Am I there yet?
They say that, that which does not kill you makes you stronger. Who is "they"? I can't remember right now but there are times I want to call they up and say, really? What did you go through? My wise mother, who has given me years of insight and advice, once told me, the Lord won't give you more than you can handle. And while I believe her, or maybe it's just want to believe her, I'm ready to throw my hands up and say 'Mercy!' I want to say, Lord, I can't take much more...I'm at my breaking point!...Please give me a break, cut me some slack, let me love life again and be happy. It hasn't been until just recently that I realized I'm just a shell of my former self. Man, I was fun, light-hearted, entertaining, always doing something dumb because it seemed fun. I even used to get complimented on my smile all the time. Wow, I can't even remember the last time that happened...mainly because I don't do it much anymore. Or that on the occasions I start laughing and smiling really hard, it doesn't take much to make my cheeks hurt because those smile muscles don't get used much lately. How sad is that? It finally came to me why I'd turned into this shell of a person who constantly suffers from chest pains because she's so stressed.
Now while this is my blog and I'm usually brutally honest, there are some things that I just can't fully divulge here. There are a very few select people who know it all and I trust them implicitly not to discuss it with anyone other than us. This post is raw and honest and I'm sorry if you're shocked at some things said but this is me and what I'm trying to fix. That being said, I'd say things started to go downhill (for lack of a better term) during the last months of 2006. I decided to move to Denver to get a "real job" and was initially stoked to get a great paying job that allowed me to travel, keep busy and also allowed me the opportunity to meet this amazing guy from Michigan. And while I was ecstatic with the new relationship I was in, I was also in a working environment that no one should ever have to deal with: blatant sexual harassment, ending up in the hospital with pneumonia because I'd worked 4 months straight with no days off and wasn't allowed to rest when sick, constantly being told I was worthless and sub-par by my boss even though the work I was doing was top-notch and executives at companies were telling me the exact opposite. Why did I stay? Well, I had bills and there weren't any jobs running around with a comparable salary and I wasn't willing to be homeless and car-less. So I stuck it out and kept my eye out for something better. During the spring of 2007, my company went bankrupt and we were all laid off. I remember crying at the time because, who likes losing a job even if your boss is the devil incarnate? But if was a blessing in disguise and I quickly found another job that paid better and for once I was in an atmosphere where I was treated decently and while I wasn't curing cancer or doing rocket science, I enjoyed my job.
Life seemed to be stabilizing a bit and my relationship with Mr. Wonderful was progressing to the point where we were making plans for him to move to Colorado to be with me. Finally. After all the phone calls and text message bills so out of control that even I'm amazed I managed to sneak them into my weekly expense report (shhhh, I know it wasn't right but I justified it by putting up with a boss who commented on my butt and chest size), we were going to be together. 2 weeks before he was supposed to arrive, I got the news that he'd been given the opportunity to work for a company that would pay really well...in Indiana. I was crushed. I don't think I had cried that hard since being dumped by my last boyfriend and that guy takes the Eternal Award for D-bag Boyfriends. I was convinced that this was the end of us and this was his way out. Hey, being in an endless series of relationships with major jerks tends to make you not believe Mr. Wonderful when he tells you he's taking the job so he can save money for our future family. I was hurt that he'd "chosen his job over me" and it made me a wee bit (read: hugely) on the bitter side. It affected our relationship greatly and I did make the decision that if when my lease was up on September of 2008 and we weren't making plans of somehow being together everyday, I couldn't do it anymore. It didn't have anything to do with my not loving him, it was the exact opposite. It literally broke my heart every time I had to drive to the airport to drop him off from his latest visit and drive back home or to work in a sobbing mess, feeling like my heart had been ripped out. I just couldn't take the heartache anymore. Call it any ultimatum if you want, I don't. I wasn't saying 'pick me or your job'. I was saying that the long-distance was too damn hard on me and I just wasn't strong enough to continue on with it with no end in sight. I don't know of any couple that would enjoy a long-distance relationship where there's no plan of being together.
Fast forward to July 2008 and arrangements had been made for me to come and work with Mr. Wonderful in Indiana. I was more than a little scared to go, to be honest. I'd uprooted my life before for boyfriends and those crashed and burned. Here I was leaving great friends, a great job that I loved, a house (albeit a rental) I loved living in, I'd have to leave my dog. And all I could think about was if I left it all behind, how did I know that things would work out with Mr. Wonderful and he wouldn't dump me in the land of the Hoosiers? I didn't. I was just scared to put myself out there again. But like my once-again wise mama said, "he isn't like D-bag Numero uno...I just know he wouldn't do that to you." And so I trusted that it would be okay, that we'd be okay. And we were. We got engaged, started planning a wedding and making plans to eventually move back to Colorado to get away from the hotel-dwelling lifestyle we were in. However, that happened a lot sooner than we were expecting when I was laid off and he 2 weeks later due to the tanking economy. We decided to go to the courthouse and get legally married, all the while still planning for the mountain ceremony in the fall. I found a job right away but I admit I took it in desperation. We'd socked away quite a pretty penny for the wedding and I didn't want to go through it all while waiting for a job. So I took a job that paid me substantially less than any job I'd had in the last 3 years. While I was excited for this new job at first for how greatly they helped those in need, it soon became clear that some of the employees felt no need to treat employees with respect. Instead, talking to you like you were a mentally challenged 5-year old was more the norm. Let me tell ya, dealing with that everyday for almost a year gets to you. While it initially seemed easy to leave your work problems at work and head home to your husband, getting that treatment all day, everyday wears on you. You become bitter. You have a very short fuse. You snap at people and are swearing waaaay more often than you should. Where you once used to take pride in your work, you now could care less because some coworkers think you're stupid and suck regardless so what's the point of trying to do a good job? And then you call in sick one day when you're really not sick but in fact you're taking a self-prescribed Mental Health Day because you know your mental health isn't doing so hot and the term "going postal" doesn't seem too far off.
Then just a short month after the actual wedding, Mr. Wonderful gets the news that his current job is going to drastically reduce his pay to what most high-schoolers make and gets a job offer from our former employer that he really couldn't pass up. The economy was getting worse and there were no good jobs to be had. So off he went to the east coast and I stayed behind. And again I was wrought with the why's. Why couldn't the job be here in Colorado? Why did he have to leave a month after our wedding? Why couldn't I just get to be with the one person I wanted to be with the most? Why do I have to be separated from my husband of a month? I was mad, mad at everything. Which turned into everyone. And I felt lost, disconnected. Call it depressed if you will but lost seemed to fit better.
Now I'm pretty sure I've realized how I've become this person. I've been dealing with constant high-stress since the summer of 2006. The things I've listed may seem trivial to you but like I said earlier, there are things that have gone on that I am not listing here and they trump all of the things I did list. Anyway, high-stress since the summer of oh-six. I'm no psychologist but dealing with such high-stress non-stop for over 3 years can change a person. It can turn you into a mess. I've finally reached the point where I can't take it anymore. No no no, I'm not talking about hopping in the bathtub with a butter knife and a handful of Prozac. I'm talking about weeding out the stresses in my life in hopes of getting Me back. Some may be easy, some could be extremely difficult but I feel I've reached my breaking point so I have to try. I want to again find joy in the things that gave me joy, to get rid of the constant anxiety and chest pains. To find who I was.
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