Diary of a Recovering Idiot

Chapter 1 - The First Cut is the Deepest

My life is falling apart and to keep myself from going crazy I'm writing. I don't know what I'll do with it all, but I think publishing it as a book may be an option. I'm more than willing to tell others what I'm gone through if it will save another woman from enduring what I did. Some might thing a bit dramatic...even extreme but you have not heard my story yet. Plus writing it all down is the only way I can think to wrap my mind around what is happening to me...just to think about it boggles my mind.

My fortieth birthday is a week away, but I'm feeling far from festive. How could I? If fact I don't think anyone would be if they were in my position. You see, my husband of eighteen years came home about two weeks ago and told me he had filed for divorce. Yes, you read it right, after more than twenty years together‑divorce.

Note people. Not that he was thinking we needed a break or any of that, "it's me, not you" claptrap. Just, "I've filed and I'm leaving you". Not a drop of blood was anywhere in my body after he said those words. How could there be? He was my all. Walter was my beginning and end, my one and only love. I lived for him. I was convinced I had heard wrong.

It seems, my hearing was just fine. From numb, I went to a wailing banshee. Crying, yelling, and asking him what I had done wrong. What did I need to do to fix it, to make him come back to me? In short, I unwomaned myself to him. Me, Lindsay Haynes, had stooped below my beneath, and he simply laughed in my face. "It's time to trade up to a newer model," Walter said. "I had you for twenty years too long."

As the door slammed shut on life as I knew it, my feet gave out and I ended up in a crying heap on the floor. It was pathetic. If it hadn't been for my daughter Kylie, dragging me up and into the bedroom, God knows how long I would have been on that cold, tile floor. I came to myself clutching my pillow, eyes swollen shut and the feel of a cool washcloth being wiped over my face. It was my Kylie, fourteen years old and forced into the position of having to take care of her mother. A mother so dependent on a man, she had been reduced to nothingness when he walked out the door.

That was two weeks ago and as the days went by I found myself swinging between sadness and anger faster than the second-hand of a watch. All I was doing was thinking, and even the smallest thing sent my mind racing. With each new thought the sadness became less and less, but the anger was building like lava in a volcano that kept pushing at a blockage in a vent to erupt. That is why I have taken fingers to keyboard, so I don't commit the unthinkable...to further unwoman myself. The writing is letting me get it all out but most of all it is forcing me to look at my life.

Forty-years-old around the corner and what can I say about myself people? At this point in time, nothing much, but you can be damned sure that I won't be saying the same thing at forty-one. Oh no. There is no way I will allow Walter to think he has 'bested' me with his callous attitude. It doesn't take much to turn love into unadulterated hate and he has done it with one swift tug of the rug from under my feet.

For the past few weeks I have been asking myself, who am I right now? A mother of two, a soon to be ex-wife...so I've been informed, plus a near friendless 39.9-year-old. A look back showed my world revolved around Walter and our kids, but outside my door there was another bigger world that I somehow didn't know was flying by. Was I blind people? No, the word I would be looking for right now is pathetic. There is that word again. I loved a man who clearly didn't love me or we would still be together, but I somehow couldn't see it. So what am I going to do?

Get a life is what! Also add to that list, get a clue, but most of all get some self-respect. How could I have loved someone so much that I forget that I'm supposed to love yourself? I don't know, but people I know I need to start loving me, and right quick. It was sad that it took something as drastic as my husband telling me he wanted a divorce to really make me look at my life. The relief is, something finally did.

When I realized how much I had been missing, I knew I had to expand my horizons. It was like I had been put under house arrest for the past I don't know how many years. House bound unless it was to cater to the whims of others. My life was in a sad, sad place.

Looking at one thing, made me look at all the other things in my life. The way I dealt with my husband, the children, friends and work mates, everything had to be reevaluated. I knew to me Walter came first no matter what, but when I discovered the things I has classed as secondary, I wanted to slap myself. I had somehow placed myself in the position of doormat in every aspect of my life and the most disturbing and saddest part of it is that I never realized it. How could I let myself be reduced to 'the thing', that just happened to be there? A 'nothing' that everyone walked all over in their quest to find their own happiness. What about my happiness? Did the people around me really think I wasn't worth it? More importantly, did I think I wasn't worth it? Well, no more of that. Attitude adjustment...pronto.

Some say, what people think about you is often what you allow them to think. Others say it doesn't matter what you do, people will think what they want. Well I have come up with a new motto, "Think whatever you want because I'm going to do what I need to do to make me happy".

I'm moving towards the place I needed to be. Everything isn't perfect, but the key thing is that I now understand I'm responsible for my own happiness. You would have though that at my age I would have had this figured out, but sadly I missed that memo. Everybody else is out there trying to find his or her own joy but I was waiting for it to be given or shown to me. Sad, I know, that it took me so long to figure out I must love myself first, and what others choose to do is up to them.

I know a lot of the people reading this must be saying, "Yeah right, I'm really to believe she is going to change just like that". Well right now, it's change or tell the world to stop and let me jump off. I know that even though I have come to this very important conclusion that this won't be easy. It will be full of bumps and scrapes and lots of healing along the way, but I have to do this. No, I need to do this. A motivational speaker I saw online said that, "Progress = Happiness" and I have to agree with him. Everyday that I have been looking at my life and taking those important first steps to change. I'm on the right path. I know I'm making progress and I truly feel a lot happier.

My life needs to change, and at this point it can only be for the better. I know writing will be good for me because I need to get my feelings out about what is happening to me. To add to this disaster, I've found myself in the position of having few friends or family I can talk to. I needed to talk to someone, to tell them all about the crap that has been bottled up inside me, that even I didn't know had taken over my life.

I don't know what I will do, but the one thing I know is that some type of change has to come. I plan to enjoy even the little things that others consider trivial. I need to live life. There is so much to see and too little time for it all but I had been letting it all past me by. Walter may have made the first cut but I hope he can take all the ones that will be coming his way.