The Life of Bon: September 2018

Monday, September 10, 2018

Sunday

Sundays are the hardest days for me.

I feel it from deep inside.  A desire to hide.  To crawl into bed and never get out.  To cry and cry and cry.  To open up some valve inside of me- the valve that protects my pride, that tells me not to cry in front of people, that says, "Alright now... keep it together."  To just open up the floodgates and allow the outside to match the inside.

Instead I wear a full face of makeup, heels and an ironed dress.  Fresh dyed hair and shaved legs.  Maybe if the outside looks good enough I can almost trick the inside.  We got this!  We are bold!  Beautiful!  Confident!  This doesn't hurt a bit!

Sunday is a long, tiresome, lonesome day.  A day where I worship, where I plead for help from God, where I am surrounded by my church, my community and friends.  A day where I have a mandatory napping period (self imposed!); a day designated for rest, understanding, and healing.  Why is this day the one that sends me reeling, crumbling, begging for it to be over?

Perhaps I feel so strongly on this day the hope of what could have been.  The hope of a life together built around family, God, community, love, forgiveness, growth, healing.  A life of connection.  A life of belonging.

But.

When I feel my lowest, help arrives. My friend who takes my baby in the hall during church so I can at least catch one nugget of truth from the speaker. Help arrives from my sister who calls me and asks me if I want to come over last minute for dinner.  Help arrives when I come home from that dinner to a slice of chocolate cake on the porch.  Help arrives when my friend comes over to borrow some nutmeg and she asks me how my day was and I burst into tears and she gives me a big hug and then goes down to the jewelry basement with me and helps me crank out 40 orders so I won't be behind tomorrow.

A life of connection.
A life of belonging.
Thank you, friends, for carrying me through this Sunday.



Tuesday, September 04, 2018

Hobby Lobby.

It happened today at Hobby Lobby.

Everything was innocent.  So regular Tuesday morning, so easy,  so not "Oh my gosh I'm getting a divorce and everything about my life is going to be different and I don't even know where I am anymore."

I went with my friend Sarah because I needed her minivan to buy a tv stand for $139.99.  At first I thought the price tag said $1399.99 and I thought "dang, I can't afford that but I love that tv stand."  And then I realized it was $139.  And I talked to Sarah and said "I need your van for Hobby Lobby right away before someone else buys this. " And she said ok.

It was Sarah and me and three of our combined five children.  Heavens bless school.

We yanked the price tag on the tv stand.  I picked out two standard drawer knobs.  None of this bright turquoise or moon shaped door knobs that Hobby Lobby has going on these days.  We strolled down the party section where Sarah was looking for tickets so that she could open up her very own "Mommy Store" for her children.  Oh, parenting.  The kids touched everything in sight.  There was lots of "No, you can't have that, put that back before it breaks, DON'T OPEN THAT PACKAGE."

We rounded the corner from the party aisle and all of a sudden there we were, smack in the middle of the world's largest Christmas selection.

The memories came rushing back, like a flood- urgent, steady, swift.  The day after Thanksgiving, him and me and our two babies at Hobby Lobby picking out all things Christmas.  We need new decorations!  Fresh decorations for a fresh start!  What kind of ornaments on our tree this year?  I'm kind of tired of the gold.  Ok.  Let's add some color.  Do we want decorative Christmas pillows?  Oh that would be so fun.  I kind of want to put new lights on the front of our house.   Oh my gosh we have to get one of these silver Christmas trees with the snow.  Let's do all new stockings this year.  Red for the girls and green for the boys so they all match.  Should we buy extra just in case we have another baby?  You devil you.  Maybe three extra stockings?  Oh stoppppppp.....

A marriage rocky, hard, and troubled-seemingly finding its smooth sailing.  At last.  We can do this, I thought.  We're out of the rough patch.  Gosh we're so tough, and we've been through so much, but our marriage is stronger than ever and we got this.  It felt so good to be coming out of that storm and to feel safe, secure, invincible.  Hope bursting out the doors of that Hobby Lobby Christmas section.

We loaded up the babies and the Christmas decorations and picked up a pizza and went home to eat the pizza and put the babies to bed and decorate the home to be Christmas.

But the storms came back, the rocky got rockier, the invincible, suddenly, so heartbreakingly vincible.  A clear realization that we would never need those extra stockings.

And I'm left in this Hobby Lobby, looking down a row of tacky Christmas ornaments wondering when these memories will stop assaulting me.  When the hope that we are strong enough to make this marriage work will finally give up and die already.  In my head the hope is dead.  Put to rest and sleeping peacefully six feet under.   But in my heart that hope is more tenacious.  Still yearns for life.  Frantically tries to jump out of my chest and begs for another chance.

Leaving my marriage is essentially the painful job of forcefully saying goodbye to that hope.  Of knowing that giving the hope life again and again and again will not ulimately give me the life I want or deserve.  I tried.  For seven years.  Oh how I tried.

Letting hope die.

Who would know that's the hardest part?