A Time to Mourn

I like all of the times to laugh, time to pray, time to....anything good.  But this is a time to mourn.  Not the end of my marriage.  That, I mourned for years.  I have now laid it in the ground and for the most part, I mourn what it wasn't, but not what I actually had.  No, this mourning is to the depth of my soul.  I mourn for the woman who has spent so many years striving to love, to be there, to hold life together for so many...who now feels alone in the world.  Today, I feel sorry for her hurt.  I am taking the time to extend my sympathy to her.  To let her know that it's ok to be hurt.  To feel alone.  To ache.  To wish.  I am giving her the grace that she has tried to give others over the years.  The grace to allow feelings and emotion.  To allow hurt to hurt and then heal.  Not to have to shove it aside, but to allow it.  To allow it to move her toward being the woman that she wants to be.  Though this phase is not her best.  I am seeing her.  I am weeping with her.  Yes, I know I'm talking about myself.  But by speaking in the third person, it somehow allows me to feel free to extend to myself what I need.  And then, to also receive it as a gift.  Grace.  Time.  The permission to bawl my eyes out and scream, "not fair, not fair!"  It's not fair.  Our biggest fights used to be about not using people.  About not using God.  About making people more important than stuff.  And yet, he still gets to have all of the friends that I have.  He gets to benefit from the relationships that I nurtured and from the ones that I had to grow in.  I had to grow and change and mature and learn.  I had to trust people in a way that I wasn't sure I could.  Because of him.  Because I tried so hard to trust him, but never really could.  I got good at acting like I did.  At letting things look ok, but it never sat right.  I knew early on.  I remember.  Now.  Looking back.  And when these things happen now, they rip wide open the painful wounds that he has been creating for over twenty years.  But they are wounds that I have experienced alone.
Nobody knows what it takes for me here in my room or even in my house.  How hard it is to remember that I get to live a different life now.  That I can put a nail in the wall or choose to do something that seems not quite perfect.  I still panic. 
I need to learn to embrace the time to mourn.  I need to mourn the loss of so much.  Of my comfort in my church home.  Oh, I CAN go, obviously, but I long for the peaceful kindness, the gentleness, the comfort.  I mourn for the ladies that have been my friends but can't walk here with me.  They love me.  I know that.  But I have no right to ask them for what I want...for what I need.  And I have to mourn in silence.  For when I try to put it to words, it steps on toes, it creates discomfort.  Do you know that not one person in the whole world has said, "to hell with him, I'm with you sweetie?"  No wonder I feel lonely.  Though I'm trying to be big enough.  Mature enough.  Kind enough.  Though I want in every way to grow into the woman who can handle this.  It rips my heart out still.  And I just have to allow that feeling for now, because pretending that it's different doesn't make me any better.  I can write here.  I can cry here in my room.  Used to crying in this room. 
I want curtains.  I need a sewing machine.  I have been vacuuming a used couch for an hour.  Trying to put my room together.  I wish that I could just get rid of things and start again.  I wish that I had been able to get a bed today.  I wish that I didn't feel like I have to get all of these things done on my own.  But, I do.  It's just a fact of life.  Nobody is coming to help me.  He didn't when we were married and there's nobody coming now.  I just have to figure it out.  Because just saying what I need doesn't make anyone obligated to meet that need.  Others have their own needs.  I made this choice.  It was for my survival.  For the benefit of my kids too.  I know what happened.  I know it clearly.  Sometimes I want to lay it out bluntly for people....clarify for them what I classify as enough to push me to this point, but I know that I never will. 
This is a hard day again.  I've been a bother.  Irritable with a friend.  Kept her awake in the night.  I guess that's it too....I've realized that there is nobody coming.  That I gave up the call anytime and I'll be there status. People don't want to appear to be supporting divorce or something?  I don't know.  But I do know that if you say something deep from your heart and there's no response then you need to realize that you are just making a fool of yourself.  That others have their own stuff and they have no reason to deal with yours.  Mine.  They have no reason to have to deal with this pain.  None.  Period.  I realize it.  Now, I have to learn to live with it.  Man, I miss having a mom. 
Can I possibly cry anymore?  I'm just so hurt and a little mad....and mostly....full of grief.  Yet, even in this impossible now, I sense the hope.  I know that where I am is not without purpose.
blessings.