A marker in the sand

I’m finding it difficult to write about our journey these days.  I will be truthful, this is my third attempt at blogging.  The first I took offline when my marriage disintegrated—it was written primarily for me to keep in touch with my people far and wide, dispersed among the country thousands of miles apart.  It was a mask of what our life was really like—the stormy rages disguised by sweetheart pictures of my children, the beautiful ocean, crafts, friends.

Believe it or not, those posts that I kept up so that I could remember a sweeter time, were entered into evidence against me, as a kind of proof that the domestic violence didn’t happen.  Right now, I can almost laugh at the ludicrousness (is that even a word), when it’s clearly not a laughing matter.  But who honestly writes and posts detailed accounts of violence committed in their own home, by someone who they love and trust?  Needless to say, that blog went dark.

I then attempted a second blog, where my said beloved people across the nation had to sign in to keep up with the happenings.  It was there that I bled and cried and tore my hair out in fear, frustration at the court process, terror that something would happen to us, but having learned from my blog 1.0 experience, it was safe from the hands of my ex-husband.  And for a time I kept that up, even loaded up pictures of me and my children—surviving, growing, developing a life all on our own.  And then…when the final nail in the divorce coffin drove in, I somehow drifted away from that, resorting to facebook and Instagram and text as an easier and less time consuming means to reach out to my people—between the whirlwind drop offs and work schedule and whirlwind pick ups and extracurricular, homework time, dinner time, clean up, bed time, story time, etc. etc.   In fact, I still reach out to my people that way—email, phone calls, and few and far between visits, notwithstanding.

But somewhere along the line, I missed the writing--of putting to words pieces of my heart and soul.  And i needed to do it all on my own, in the open, without fear of someone finding it and trying to use it against me.  Of helping my healing process along by joining words to emotions, feeling, experiences, and maybe in some miraculous way, connecting with others who might be swimming in the same sea.  That somehow, leaving these words along the page, virtual or real, are a kind of buoy in the drift water, or a marker in the sand.  We are here, we are living and breathing, we are surviving, hoping, wondering.  We are pushing forward in our new, unexpected life.  We are not alone. <3