why i treasure every day i'm alive

I had a friend over the other evening for dinner. She came early, before my kids came home, so we had a chance to talk privately. She's going through a divorce right now and had a lot of questions for me about what I went through during mine. One of the things she wanted to know was "did I ever get angry?".



Did.....I......ever.....get......angry?!?!



Well, let's see. My beloved husband of 13 years reveals to me that I've essentially been lied to every day--that my life: my sweet, wonderful, spiritually-rich life as I knew it, was a lie. He refuses my very genuine offers to stay together and work through the mess that had been created. As far as I was concerned, he'd doomed my children to the very kind of life I had grown up in that I had worked with all my heart and soul to make different for them.



So, yeah, I was just a *smidgey* bit angry.



It was anger as a secondary emotion--a reaction to the intensity of the pain I couldn't handle. In that anger, I gave my ex-husband a black eye, I kicked in our bathroom door, I let words fly out of my mouth that I didn't even know I could say, and I even recall attempting to crash into his car with mine at one point.

It was not my finest hour.



It all felt so foreign to me--doing any harm to Brad. He was the person I loved most in the whole world. I didn't want to hurt him--I just wanted to hurt the bad out of him. That feeling of my anger directed at him felt so unnatural, that I ended up directing toward a more familiar target....myself. I'm certain we women are all guilty of that.

In my situation, I tried to take my own life. That's not what I intended to do, but that's how it nearly ended up.

It was the Friday before Easter, last year (which feels like a hundred years ago as I write this). I had to have my 13 year old cat put to sleep due to kidney failure. It was difficult to do--that cat had been like a child to me. Brad came from work and met me at the veterinarian's office. He gave me a big hug, took the cat's cardboard box coffin and offered to go out to the country to bury it. I thought that was very sweet of him--that way the boys wouldn't have to deal with knowing their dear pet was buried in our backyard.

Three hours later, Brad still hadn't come home. I put kids to bed, cleaned up the house. Still no Brad. I was growing nearly frantic, unable to reach him on his cell phone and worried that he'd been in an accident. That's when I sat down to distract myself by checking email. And there, in my junk inbox, was a letter from someone named "Steve Richards". It was actually Brad. A long, painful email telling me he was leaving me but didn't know where he was going. Hinting to all the awful things he'd done. Worst of all, it sounded like he was out to do some damage to himself.

That whole night was a blur, and the next day, and the next night. I didn't sleep at all. I called the police and every emergency room in a 200 mile radius. I finally located where Brad was--hours away. I got him to talk to me on the phone and begged and begged for him to just come home, that we loved him and would help him.

Easter Sunday came. The boys were confused why Dad wasn't there. I used the excuse that he was on a business trip--and they seemed to buy that, though still sad he didn't get to see them look in their baskets. We went to church, put together a basket for Brad, colored some pictures, watched an Easter DVD. I put them to bed. Then he finally came home.

I hadn't slept for nearly 3 days at this point. I was still just a few weeks into getting over Rheumatic Fever which had kept me in bed for over a month. My heart was damaged. I was about as much of a wreck as a person could be--physically and emotionally. I didn't know whether to hug Brad or hit him when he came through the door. I might have done both. I just wanted him to hold me and tell me that everything was going to be ok. I needed him. I wanted him so desperately to be the man I thought he was.

Instead we talked. And I had to hear more about the extent of what he had done over the course of our marriage. My ears, my head, my heart couldn't take it. I just wanted to sleep. I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up from the nightmare I had somehow stumbled into.

During the six weeks between my Mom's cancer diagnosis and death, a year prior, my obgyn recommended taking over the counter Tylenol PM to help me sleep. They worked for a time, and then stopped. He told me that--even pregnant (which I was then)--I could take up to six of them at a time but not for more than three consecutive days.

We had a bottle of Simply Sleep in the medicine cabinet that Easter night. It was Tylenol PM without the Tylenol. I grabbed the bottle and, with my hands shaking, spilled out what looked like six pills into my palm--and then, thinking, "I'm not pregnant, I can take more", I added to the pile. How many were there? 12? 15? 20? I didn't know. I just knew they meant sleep. In one sweeping motion--I stuck them all in my mouth and swallowed.

As soon as they slid down my throat--that knot of little blue pills--I knew I'd done something stupid. I knew I wanted to take it back.

(part 2 tomorrow)