I didn’t leave sooner.  I feel like I can’t forgive myself, forgive them. I keep carrying the grief, the loss and heartbreak that wakes me up every night between 3 and 4am with the trauma traveling through my body.  My heart pounds, my shoulders and neck hurt, my breathing is shallow.

Logically, I know forgiveness is for my benefit, it doesn’t mean what happened was ok.

I’ve read in Chinese Medicine that they use the Organ Body Clock with the example of waking up between 3 and 5am as a sign of underlying grief or sadness.

Some spiritual teachings say waking up at that time every night is the Witching Hour and many reasons can explain it; a sign of awakening, a call to manifest or create, spirit guides are sending me messages.

For years I didn’t know of these things.  They are comforting, if perhaps they are true.  I know the Chinese Medicine thoughts on grief and sadness are absolutely true for me. And from the spiritual work I’ve been practicing, maybe the other insights are evolving.

I read long ago that the biggest cause of health problems within women was unresolved issues.  I never forgot that.

For decades it was chronic insomnia in my mind.  The sense of urgency to solve the marital problems, to come up with the answers and whys to questions I would never have.

Thoughts:

I helped you through Engineering school, as I worked at Boise State University and University of Idaho for 8 years in my late 30s and early 40s. I  longed to have another child after being a single mother for 10 years. I attended school part time. I was getting older.

There would never be deeper than on the surface conversations.  No big future plans discussed after the house was purchased after getting an engineering job, post-graduation.  But I had my home I loved, my space, my little part of the planet where I created beautiful things in the yard and the kitchen. Clinging to false hope the rest would happen.

No shared dreams or visions, but we had our outdoor mountain life that kept us together that soon would end. I knew you wanted to be near the mountains when we left Oklahoma after getting married in 1988.  We had our sense of humor and love of music and the outdoors. That was something, right?

The meltdown came,   what we worked for, to actually buy our beautiful home, only to have it all smashed in the 2008, 2009 Economic Depression.  The 1st lay off came.  8 months later an Engineering position came available in Seattle. A place I didn’t want to move to that wasn’t  our choice to make. It felt like nothing was on our terms anymore.   You left to Seattle, I stayed in Boise to work on the house with a sense of urgency as the value plummeted.

“I want to rent the house to someone until the value goes back up.  I put some inheritance from my mom and sold 5 acres I bought on a river in Oklahoma for a down payment.” to the vapor. The pain within him could not be expressed. I see now, I didn’t stand my ground to not let the house go. I was floating in another reality. I threw my biggest investment away.

We had a big garage sale, I watched a truck take away my large plants and my beloved pet Sun Conure, Maggie.  She looked so bewildered, talking to me and screeching as I cried and cried.  You stood next to me silent.  We couldn’t have a loud parrot in an apartment in the city.  But giving her away was temporary in my mind. I would have her back. I never saw her again.

The shock from the layoff, the reality that what we did to secure our future as late bloomers, was gone.  The 2nd layoff came 6 months after I arrived to Seattle.  Heartbroken, in 600 sq ft.  I knew no one.  I was frozen.

We moved 8 times to other apartments because of high rent, without any discussion on how to fix it.

“Just adapt, would you?” you said. I was crying, begging you to grieve with me, I had visions, dreams, didn’t you?  In anger, you said “Fuck your visions.”  Visions I loved.

I left for Mexico for 2 months for a made-up yoga retreat. My first long solo trip at 58 years old.  I returned and met the a very funny, cute guy. Unknown to me then, a narcissist. We were at a happy hour at a Seattle Mariners baseball game near the bullpen. Our beers on a trashcan. He hooked me in to gain my trust, to open me up to what was missing in my life, to make me think he was my answer. He made me laugh hard for the first time in so long.  I felt charmed, beautiful.  I knew better, that being swept off your feet so fast is a red flag, but nothing would stop me from the spell.

I forced myself to leave that poisonous relationship that was destroying me 4 years later, as a shadow of myself, never before experiencing a manipulator at that level, to be a target, a gradual chipping at my soul that progressed to obvious abuse. And I loved the false self he showed me in the beginning, as narcissists do.

That void only grew larger after the original losses with my husband.  That I would be so quickly with another man, both of us married but separated. I surprised myself I did what I never thought I would do.

I’m traveling alone now for almost 2 years. My things are in my husband’s apartment or still in storage since 2009. Storage, a dark place for my old life I thought would only last a few months. Isolating Covid travel magnifying it all.

I’m still married for over 30 years for financial reasons. We’re still awkward friends. As I am starting all over, stripped, at 65, I’m seeking myself and purpose again.

Isn’t that a Buddhist dream?  Who are we when we lose everything that we think defines us?