My Story

 

Before I got married, I felt confident and secure in who I was. I was mostly happy and joyful. I was the girl that laughed so loud in high school that people commented on how they could hear me at the other end of the school. I was very fortunate to have been raised in a very loving and nurturing environment.

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My parents and sister were phenomenal. I have said multiple times without hesitation that I truly cannot recall one single negative memory from my childhood. Of course I had experienced normal pains both physically and emotionally, but I truly do not remember ever feeling an ounce of unworthiness from my family. And yes, I absolutely know how wonderful that is.

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I really was enjoying my life. I had many friends and enjoyed all kinds of activities, especially sports as a high school student. I received a scholarship to play volleyball in college and continued to enjoy life even more during that time. While I was in college I met the man who later became my husband.

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Over the years of my marriage I slowly and steadily became someone completely different than the reality of who I truly am. My husband was emotionally abusive. As a very young woman I didn’t see the signs early in the relationship that emotional abuse was in my future. Over the years the abuse escalated. Looking back now I see that as I became more weak and felt less worth the more destructive and hurtful his words and actions became.

I had suspicions of infidelity many times and every time I questioned him I endured more emotional abuse. His defense was always an offense. He would always turn things around and call me horrible names and do whatever he could to make me feel bad about myself in order to get the focus off of him. It escalated.

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One night I arrived home after having been in one of my best friend’s wedding and celebrating at the reception to a very angry husband. I can only assume that his guilt had once again redirected toward me, only this time it was physical. That night he broke my arm.

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I couldn’t believe it! But it wasn’t his behavior that was so confusing, it was my own. I realized that I had become someone that I didn’t recognize. I used to feel like I was on top of the world. Now I was so low I couldn’t even see the top anymore. How had I let this happen?

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Did you know that if you put a frog in a pot of room temperature water and turn on the heat, the frog will not jump out? It will just stay in there until it boils to death. If you put a frog directly into boiling water it will jump right out. Sometimes we do not see or feel or recognize that we are declining.

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Whether you notice a decline depends on how steep it is right? Well… the point is, over the time I had endured the emotional abuse, my inner dialog had changed drastically without my awareness. I had conformed to a belief system about myself that was entirely false.

It was during those times that I felt the most vulnerable, when I was scared for my future, when I was afraid of what other people would say or think of me, and when I felt the most sadness, that his abuse and the continued inner berating of myself stuck like super glue to my subconscious mind.

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As those suggestions began to stick in my subconscious mind, I began to think, feel and behave as though they were true. I had been told I was stupid too many times to actually think, feel and behave as though I was smart. It became a terrible vicious cycle in which I felt worse and worse about myself.

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I know exactly what it is like to have a negative inner dialog. I know exactly how it feels. I know how it prevents success, how it continually destroys confidence, how it increases anxiety and sadness, how it brings upon us doubt and fear.

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I also know exactly how to change it.

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August 21, 2007 around 4:30 a.m. my phone rang. Phone calls at that time are never good and something inside me knew before my feet hit the floor what had happened. My mom was on the line. All she said was “I need you.” I said “I’ll be right there.” I was in my car in just seconds. I’ll never forget the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles from several blocks away as I turned to go north toward my parent’s house. I knew.

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I pulled into the drive behind the truck of a firefighter. As I was running inside I saw the familiar faces of the volunteer firefighters in our wonderful small town. I may have been running but it was as if the sadness that was all around me turned a few seconds into hours. I could see it in their faces. The faces of his friends, his past students, wrestlers he’d coached, their faces said it all, but I already knew.

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I went in the house to more familiar faces of those that had loved him. I could see the anguish and I could feel the compassion as I passed them. Their hearts were breaking for me and my heart was breaking for her, the one that had loved him the most, my mom. She took my hands and simply said “He’s gone.” Words cannot express and are simply not adequate to explain the pain, the loss, the emptiness of losing my best friend in life, my dad.

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One evening just a few short weeks after my dad’s death I was blessed with the undeniable and bittersweet evidence that my husband had been unfaithful. I filed for divorce first thing the next morning. Grieving the death of my father and going through a divorce at the same time was needless to say incredibly difficult. As painful as it was, it was necessary. And so began my journey back to me.