Am I Sad or Crazy?

Thank you. Thank you all so much for the support on my “Being Strong When You Are Weak” post. I received so many amazing comments and emails. I also received a lot of requests to talk about the topic of love and break-ups more. I guess I’m not the only one going through a tough time.

When Ben told me he was leaving we didn’t talk at all for a few weeks. To go from living with someone, seeing them every day, sleeping with them every night to NOTHING is shocking to the system. It was more than just hard, it created a huge physical void to match the emotional one in my heart. Even thinking about it now is painful. I just wanted to shake the sadness, run away from it or made it stop for a little bit.  I was falling apart and I didn’t know what to do.

Thankfully any time I was talking to my friends it was like they were sharing that burden with me.

I am so so grateful to my friends who listened to me and prayed for me and stayed positive and supported me. SR, Katie, Bri, Janae, Tina, Chandra, Cindy <- these people saved my life. Or at least saved me from drowning my own tears.

So I wanted to share how I got through those first hardest weeks of separation…

> Friends. I texted and called and What’s App-ed any time of day.

I was afraid my friends would get sick of me talking about this, but I needed to. I needed to talk and feel and cry and just let it all out to someone else. I would text or call or leave messages whenever I felt like I was falling apart. I knew some of my messages sounded sad or desperate (um, because I was).

I literally text “I’m just so sad…” when one of these peeps would ask me how I was.

It’s kind of tragic. But that was the truth. Why lie to cover it up to someone who just wants to help you? I was falling apart and these were my people. These were the people God put in my life to help me. I needed their help so I asked for it.

I didn’t want a lot of people to know what was going on, so at first I hesitated to tell people. I feel like saying it out loud made it too real. Plus, I didn’t really know if we were going to divorce. We hadn’t talked about anything. We hadn’t even fought about anything! Don’t we get to fight before we file for divorce?! I don’t know how these things work, but I demand a fight before I acknowledge this is real.

So yeah, I didn’t know what to tell people and everything was so unsettled there wasn’t anything definitive to say anyway. That’s a big reason I kept it off the blog – I genuinely didn’t know what was going on in my own life or relationship.

But I needed friendship and support and those few friends I opened up to, I opened up fully. I cried and spilled my guts to them over and over. It was good for me (not so much for the snotty sleeves of my hoodies though).

If you are going through a crappy time reach out to your friends. They love you and want the best for you. Don’t you want to be there for your friends? I know I hope I will never have to repay them in the same way, but if any of my peeps need me I am here any time of day or night.

> Pray. This should be first, but if I’m being honest, before I started to pray I text my friends and asked them to pray for me. I think their phone line to God gets better reception than mine. Ha!

But really, I needed immediate love and support in addition to prayers so I texted my Bible Study friends before telling anyone else. I knew they would respond with exactly what I needed in that moment of my life.

I couldn’t go to sleep so I would pray until I dozed off. When I couldn’t get out of bed I would pray for God just to make me feel better, less sad, more hopeful. I never lost hope that we would work it out. So I prayed for Ben, I prayed for myself and I prayed for our relationship. It gave me hope and peace. It was like a life raft that was keeping me from falling into a scary depression. I needed it.

> Run. I ran a lot.  Sometimes when I felt a weight on my chest like I needed to cry I walked instead. Sometimes I would stop in the middle of my run and leave a long text message to a friend. Sometimes I would stop and leave a long email to Ben that I never sent.

And when I was lucky, I would get completely lost in the run. Those were the best times because outside of short bursts of distraction it was always with me. I remember walking down the frozen foods aisle at the grocery store, eyes bloodshot from crying earlier in the day, and thinking, “I wonder if I look like someone died. I know it’s obvious I’m having a breakdown with my puffy eyes, but do I look sad or crazy? Sad or crazy…both?”

I am headed to Florida today to spend some time with Ben and his family (and all their pets).

> Distract yourself. I found the Serial podcast. I found audiobooks. Sometimes mid-podcast my mind would wander back to my problems and I would realize a whole 20 minutes went by and I didn’t hear it. But a lot of the time I was able to get into a podcast and get out of my head.

One day about  two weeks after Ben left my mom and little brother were visiting my bigger brother in Redlands. I was going to meet them out there too. It’s about an hour drive. Driving alone was the worst because it just gave me time to sit alone and think. For some reason it was extra lonely in the car. The pit in my heart dropped down to my stomach and slowly crawled back up again. The pain was overwhelming and I completely lost it. I started to cry so hard I thought the people driving alongside me would think I had lost my sh!t. I kinda had.

I tried to calm down. I pulled over. I called a friend. I proceeded to lose my sh!t for real. Then, I turned around and drove back home because I didn’t want to be around anyone. (It was this day I blogged about here. I also got lost on the way because I was probably deep in thought.)

> Set yourself up for success.

What I learned from the  whole driving debacle is that I shouldn’t set myself up for a bad time. I knew driving was lonely, I shouldn’t have agreed to take a long drive when I was at that place in my heart/brain/life. Don’t set yourself up to fall apart. Try to give yourself as many tools as possible to have a good day.

That’s where the podcasts came to be a regular part of my life. Listening to them in the car helped me think about something else and pass the time.

I was invited to go to Jerusalem for a blog trip. Sadly I was honest with myself and knew I just wasn’t in a place where I could be alone on transportation for 23+ hours. I just knew that the point I was in would result in some sort of mini-meltdown in a plane/airport/foreign land. Unfortunately I had to decline the trip  but I don’t have regrets because I know it wasn’t the best thing for me at the time.

Yes, push yourself to be social and active and LIVE – but know your boundaries and give yourself time to mourn, heal and move on. No one can say exactly how long that is but stay self aware and positive.

I also highly recommend counseling if your relationship seems like you can work it out or counseling for yourself. And also It’s Called a Break Up Because It’s Broken helped me a lot in a past life.

Question: Have any suggestions to share with the class?

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