I've been getting better at moving on with my life since it all collapsed on that sunny morning in June. The chaplain drew me a picture of what I could expect over the next year or so. It started on one side of the board where he drew a horizontal line and wrote the word normal on the line. From there the line made a steep descent towards the bottom of the board where he wrote "bottom". He said "this is where you are going and you might feel like you're already there, but you're not." He was right, as I learned of the events that were happening at home that lead to this point in my life and recalled memories of sowing seeds of my own sin I continued to sink further and further towards bottom. I thought about those things a lot. I had several nights when I would go to bed hoping that I would not wake up and that I and the world would be better off if i never woke up. Every morning I did wake up though, and my first thought was always "why?' Why must I re-live this awful life and think these horrible thoughts day after torturous day. I felt as though half of me had died and the other half was having to carry the dead weight and figure out how to do what the other half had done for the last eleven years. Eventually I hit the bottom, it wasn't really a dramatic splat or even a thud. The only way I knew that I had hit bottom was because I started to feel a little bit better everyday. After the chaplain had written "bottom" the line started to head back up, but it didn't stay that way. He explained to me that I would start on my way up to a new "normal" but that I would have bad days where I would go back towards "bottom". "Your going to move up and down for a while" he said, but eventually you won't fall so far and you'll move closer to that new normal. I've only had one day that I felt I was falling back to the bottom, that was on October 15 when I learned that my divorce had gone final the day before. I felt like it was probably comparable to when you have a terminally ill loved one and you know they're living their last days. When that last day comes you still feel the pain of the loss and probably more than you thought you would. I still think about Stef everyday and I probably will for a while, but I think that's a good thing for right now. I think of it like a workout for my heart, every time I do a rep my muscle hurts a little bit but I know it's the pain of getting stronger. Eventually I will find my new normal.
