year three

Today started busy as usual--made even more so by the fact that I woke up late, and had a son to get ready for a camping trip, and a load of clothes with necessary Boy Scout shirts in it to dry. I made kids french toast sticks and picked up neighbors on the carpool route and got them off to school and made it to work on time by the skin of my teeth. There, I completed two big projects, I went and did my weekly lunch hour volunteering at the veteran's retirement home. I had lunch myself. I went back to work and was doing a quick check of Facebook when I saw it.... A little sidebar that said what my status was on this day last year. Two words: "Two Years."

It was August 25.

The day, three years ago that I went out to my mailbox and pulled out that stiff, ugly manila envelope full of papers with signatures that ended the covenant of my marriage. That divided my once full, beautiful married life into increments of time and property and custody.

I went from remembering the significance of the date the moment I woke up  on year one. To making it till almost noon on year two. To 2:15 and only brought to my memory by Facebook on year three.

This is progress, I think. Healing. Although I've felt healed for quite some time now, it really is a process that keeps getting stronger with time. With distance. With perspective. It is why, I've noticed, most older people can shrug off stressful situations, seem above them somehow. They just know by much experience what it means to break and mend. To lose and gain. To have seasons of joy, sorrow, discomfort, prosperity, and then to loop back through them all again. How in the scheme of life, somehow, everything and nothing can matter.

I am  not that wise yet. But I am starting to understand. A little.

I will never really be the same person I was before my divorce. I will probably always tremble inside and out if I let myself relive the circumstances surrounding it for too long. I will probably always feel a deep sorrow in my heart, however briefly, when I see my husband or consider choices he's making, the things he continues to force me to sacrifice on the alter of his selfishness. Probably always consider "what if?" I will probably always have a seed of fear in me as to the nature of other people--what they might be hiding or how quickly they might be able to change or if they may ever hurt me as intensely as Brad hurt me. But the difference now is....I'm ok with it. I've got some good coping skills in place to know how to deal with it all, or when not to deal with it and just let it go. Although it is not in my  nature to close myself up emotionally, I know how to do it now and use it when I need to.

I am strong.
I am happy.
I am found.

I am still the positive product of 13 good years of marriage.

And, I think most importantly--although frequently disappointed, I still choose to believe in the inherent goodness of others. Though I have seen and been the target of flippant evil, I still choose to believe that people are genuinely kind at heart.

Three is such a symbolic number, and I think it especially fits in this case: a beginning. a middle. and an end.

Here's to that all healing balm of time.