Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Racking my brain trying to think of something anything that will make V feel even an iota better. I keep have these conversations and getting these emails from her saying things like:

"I know it sounds so stupid but I'm not meant to be this sad- it just makes me want to not exist. I don't know, maybe I'm not that strong. I don't think I could be as determined as you. I mean right now my only goal is being able to make it through work and to make it until next week. Is that my future. Why didn't I listen to my mom. Why did I move in with him. I'm seriously going through a divorce right now. I'm not sure I could ever get married now. I wish I believed in god or a higher being because I would ask god, please god let the pain stop, please let me wake up tomorrow and poof this dissapear, please let me survive, please let me not end up alone. I hate what awaits me... I hate that when I tell people they are fucking shocked, "What??????" I have to explain to them what happened and when I explain it I actually pretend like I believe the bullshit thats coming out of my mouth- or better yet that I'm okay with it. Thats the part I love.... 'yeh he did me a favor, yeh he doesn't deserve someone like me, yeh i don't want to be with someone like this'. Bullshit!!! Ugh thats why I'm so fuckin depressed right? Because if I actually believed all that then I wouldn't be feeling like this."

And I am at a loss. Because I know where she's coming from. I know exactly how she feels. But I also know where she's going and where she's going to end up. So I do have some advice and perspective for her. A break-up of this magnitude is like a challenge that you didn't sign up for. It's no different than her completing PA school or training for the 15K she is training for. Only thing is, she didn't chose this challenge. It was handed to her. This is the epitome of, "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade." And usually, when life hands you lemons, the last thing you want to do is make lemonade. You might want to throw the lemons at the person who gave them to you. You might want to use them for the many tequila shots you now desperately need on a regular basis. Lemonade is last on that list, if it's there at all. But at a certain point, lemonade needs to be made. And you need to create your new life out of the ashes of the old. You need to rebuild. You need to rediscover. You need to rise to this challenge that you didn't sign up for. And you do it. As I did; she will. We are stronger than we think we are.

The cool thing about these challenges you don't sign up for is their corollary - the victories you didn't sign up for. And there are many of them. One of my favorites of mine was the first time I walked by 102 President Street where Illinois and I used to live and didn't feel anything. It was such an empowering moment. I wanted a celebratory tequila shot with one of those lemons for that day.

"I walked by 102 President Street tonight on my way to pick up my chicken from the new Moroccan place on Hicks between Union and President. I realized when I left my apartment that the most efficient way to get there would be to walk down President Street. I knew that the last two (and only) times I have walked down that block it has felt weird. Bad weird. I was unable to look up at our apartment and couldn't picture myself not walking in. I felt stuck in the past in all these moments that took place on that block. Like moving in day. Or running out for Chinese food and bringing it back up to him. Or working late and being so excited to run up those stairs and home to him making fried chicken or taking off my coat and asking me to dance. So I stayed away from that block so I could stay in the present tense, in my new life. This time I was unabashedly looking up into the windows. What a departure from those other times. I didn't feel familiar about it like I had ever lived there. But I lived there for a year and a half. Looking in those windows was like peering in to someone else's life. I almost felt like I would have been comfortable going upstairs and looking in for real. I am not the girl that lived there. I am someone else. I am like a snake. I have shed that skin off and it isn't part of me. She isn't me. I can't believe I ever was her. She was dependant and willing to put being in a relationship before being herself. She was willing to suspend belief and take the ultimate chance. Some may call that romantic. There was no basis for me to believe that it should have turned out any other way than it did. And I am so lucky for how it all turned out. Would I want to be living in that apartment with almost one-year old twins, married to Illinois, worried about money and his drinking too much and having a messy apartment and too much to do and hating my life. What did I find so compelling about him. I think part of it was how expressive he was. Maybe I believed that because he was so expressive, he would actually be accessible. But he wasn't accessible. I didn't reach him most of the time. There were some very poignant moments we shared when we were drunk. I was never moved so much as I was by him. That card I bought him for our anniversary or Valentine's Day, I forget, that made both us cry was true. What was it again? Something about comparing the amount of times you catch your breath to him taking my breath away. He touched a part of me emotionally that no one ever has. But it didn't happen consistently and it didn't happen when I really needed it. Believing that was true love was almost as bad as believing the amazing sexual connection Staten Island and I had was true love. But it wasn't. None of it was. And now I can walk past that apartment like I never lived there. This me never did. It was my other skin. But I shed that."

V will have her share of victories. This is where the other adage, "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger," comes in. You go through this awful experience and then you come out of it like a rockstar, strong and confident and able walk by the old apartment or meet his new wife and find that she makes more sense with him than you ever did and you are so happy, so grateful that you are not stuck in that old life with him. These victories are liberating and empowering. Now V has victories to look forward to and the exciting prospect of a second chance at life. Her future was all mapped out and now she can recreate it and take her new self to all the places in her mind she's always secretly wanted to go where she never could have gone to with him by her side.