Starting Over

In today's mail, I received a DVD with a slideshow of pictures taken the day Hubby and I renewed our wedding vows in October. After a tough EMDR/therapy session and a long, emotional afternoon, seeing those images was just what I needed.

The hubster and I hadn't been getting along very well for a while. We were teetering near the brink of marital disaster, and I wondered what life would be like if I took C and walked away. All around me, marriages were crumbling, and family members were just walking away from years of commitment without any obvious troubles, so it was easy to imagine that I could do it, too.

I thought about it for a long while, and I realized that I had everything to lose and nothing to gain by walking away. I saw that I had turned my back on a love that I cherished, and I had cut myself off from the best friend I had ever known. I resolved to work th

ings out for myself so that we could be happy together, like we had been in the beginning. Then we hit rock bottom. For a week, it looked like there wasn't any choice. We were absolutely doomed. But then... Out of nowhere, hope! It started with a simple, "I love you." It involved many tearful hours of intense conversations about where we were, what we wanted moving forward, and how to get there. Somehow, we fought our way out of the darkness and back into the light.

Love may not conquer all, but it sure can conquer a hell of a lot! We decided that, coming out of our darkest hour, the best way to move forward was to start over, in a sense. We decided to renew our vows. We planned a small, casual event on our alma mater campus and invited a handful of close friends to witness. Then we went to a favorite pub and hung out with fabulous people as a very happy re-married couple. It was truly one of the greatest days of my life. We wrote out our promises to one another and read them in front of the people we loved, while C happily roamed around and played in friends' purses. ;) Honestly, it was beautiful. The only thing about it I would change is the minor hair dye disaster I experienced that made my hair look rather like a Jolly Rancher on our special day!

One of the conditions of our blissful reunion of souls, suggested by myself and agreed upon by my darling, was that I seek out therapy for the PTSD that had been lurking in the shadows and secretly running my life for nearly a decade. He, of course, had always seen it there, and had done everything he could to nourish and support me. I, on the other hand, had been in hardcore denial, because being a victim seemed to mean being weak. As it turns out, it's quite the other way around. Being a victim and identifying yourself as such gives you the strength you need to start to undo the damage of your traumas. Hubby knew this, and he quietly and gently nudged me along until I was ready to realize it for myself.

I do not write about my PTSD or my mental health issues in seek of pity. In fact, the very idea that someone would pity me for any aspect of my life seems ludicrous, because everywhere I look, I see blessings. I write about these things because expressing them helps me to empower myself, to overcome the obstacles in my life, and because there have been countless times when I felt all alone in the world, and I want others out there like myself to be able to stumble across this blog and see that nope, they're not the only ones struggling to make it in this world.

This blog is about a journey. A journey to reclaim my life, reclaim power over my life, and reclaim the unbridled joy I felt before a few jerks cruelly yanked it away. I'm taking it BACK, and how! I still have a long way to go before I'm fully healthy, but I make incredibly progress on a daily basis, and I can't remember ever having felt more loved, more special, or more fulfilled.