Story Time

Hey gang! Sorry to leave you hanging with my mysterious last post about that bold thing I was doing. No, I didn’t get a tattoo and I was not asked to give a TED talk. I didn’t go skydiving or get a haircut or pierce my nose. As some of you correctly guessed … (or saw on my Instagram posts where I already spilled the beans like two months ago) …

I eloped!

Not by myself. WE eloped. Myself and a man. A man who is now my husband. FYI that’s how eloping works. So yes, I ran away and married a man. His name is Cannon. And he’s really just the very, very best thing. You guys. He is the best thing.

(umm so cute)

Let’s back up.  Please bear with me while I attempt to capture my mushy feelings with words.

As you may already know, mushy feelings of any sort are not my specialty. You need me to talk about a Craigslist toilet? I’m your girl. But ew, feelings? Hi there you lil’ foreign-language you. The fact is, I spent many years learning how to not have feelings. Because when your feelings and beliefs are consistently belittled and invalidated, and you are made to feel that you, your opinions and your voice are worthless, you quickly learn that not having feelings is the way to go! (Not really, but this is what we call a coping mechanism).

But that was then. Now … I’ve got some mushy feelings, and I don’t know what to do! Where do they go? How do they work? Is there a YouTube tutorial somewhere? Please advise. So, here goes nothing, I am going to attempt to talk about them. Wish me luck. Hooray for feeling feelings.

Let’s back up even further.

My first marriage of 15 years ended early in 2017, which was the end of lots of awfulness and the beginning of like, torrential awfulness. Over a year and a half of feeling, as Katy Perry so beautifully expressed in song, ‘like a plastic bag.’

(You guys. Katy Perry asked us if we ever felt like a plastic bag. She really did that).

Anyway, yes Katy, I did feel like a plastic bag – drifting in the wind, wanting to start again.

Getting divorced was the worst and the best, like a painful, painful rebirth. Where I was both the baby and giving birth to the baby? This analogy is weird, let’s go back to the bag thing.

I just felt lost. So topsy-turvy. I never knew which end was up. I felt pulled in so many directions, I constantly doubted all my decisions, and I didn’t know how to move forward, so I just … didn’t. I just spiraled around and around in the same place.

I went to lunch with a friend during this time, and I explained the state of my life to her, and then we didn’t see each other again for six months. Six months later, we met up again, and as I was once again explaining the state of my life to her, she stopped me and said “So, basically you’re in the exact same place you were six months ago?” Oh. Yeah.

It was like surviving a shipwreck and then being too exhausted to do anything but lay face-down in the wet sand. For like … a year. I felt paralyzed, figuratively and literally. Sometimes I’d be walking along and just stop dead in my tracks out of nowhere. Literally could not put one foot in front of the other. Physically and mentally frozen.

Clearly this couldn’t go on forever. I had had enough, and so I went to God. (Obviously not for the first time, but for SERIOUS this time). “Here’s the deal. I need help. I am SO stuck.” I made some big promises, removed as many distractions from my life as I could. Spent more time meditating and praying and reading scriptures and good books and just trying to really, really laser focus. Cool, right? Life got immediately awesome, right? HA. No.

No, instead I hit the rock bottom-iest bottom. Just the worst, loneliest, most sorrowful night of my life. I felt overcome by a black cloud in a black hole in a universe where nothing joyful would ever exist again. I had to talk myself out of something drastic that night. I don’t know what I said to myself, but thank you Jesus, it worked.

Six days later I met Cannon.

TO BE CONTINUED!

UPDATE: Click here for part two!