Today I got a phone call from the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Department. My heart sank. The first thing I could think of was, "Who died?" Followed by, "What did I do wrong?"
Turns out it was a background check for my ex-husband. I tried to remind myself of the way I used to feel about him, instead of how I currently feel, because I didn't want to royally fuck him over. The officer doing the background check was incredibly thorough and asked a lot of probing questions. This was the most I've thought about him since before Christmas. After further thinking about it, I think some of the things I told the officer I felt about him are lies. I like to think that he is one of the most honest and patient people I've ever met...but I don't know that he is. If I ever get married again, I am going to have to work through a lot of trust issues when it comes to finances. I don't know if I want to fully share my money with anyone else ever again. I'm also going to be paranoid about someone else pulling away from me. I've worked through almost every issue...but those are the two that remain. I'm terrified of meeting another man that wants to be "strong" for me. That's not what I want at all, and I always made that abundantly clear.
It's strange to think about him. To realize that I don't think about him. Someone I promised my life to. Strange to remember how I felt after we moved out of the house, and thought I'd never want to get married again. To feel how I feel now. More free than I've ever felt. Free from the walls I built around my own heart. Our whole relationship I tried to learn to let him in, told him everything about me, but I was always so afraid of being hurt. I went to counseling. I learned to make sacrifices. I moved away from all of my friends, to a place that had nothing to offer me aside from the man I pledged my life to, only to be isolated and neglected. It was a self fulfilling prophecy.
I still remember sitting down at the co-op before I moved to Mt. Vernon, with Taylor. We had dinner, and she told me about her family. Things she'd never told anyone, and she looked up at me and told me she loved me. I remember that terrifying me, wanting to crawl into myself and run. How could someone who I had met only four months earlier love me? And a friend. Someone who didn't want anything from me, didn't want to sleep with me, be with me, impress me, win me over. She just loved me because I listened. Because she loved what I was about. That naive, blonde, 21 year old girl loved me for who I was. It took me another month, but she was the first person I called when I was crying myself to sleep. When I couldn't eat, couldn't bare to be alone. It took being terrified of a friend telling me she loved me to make me realize something in me was irreparably broken and had been my whole life. To grow the balls to change it.
I don't think I knew how to really be loved until last summer. I don't think I knew the meaning of freedom...and strangely, with all of this I've also learned to be comfortable by myself. I still have some strange walls to tear down, but that's the next step. I'm terrified, and excited all at once. Everything happening around my move home could not be more planned, and perfect. The week before my birthday, as I was driving home from watching Taylor at open mic night, it started snowing big, fat, beautiful flakes. Snow always reminds me that there's someone bigger than me, watching out for me. All of the times climbing in the early morning, as the sun rises over mountains, and you just feel someone there behind you, but you're at the end of the group. So, as the snow hit my windshield, I just laughed. I asked God for two things for my birthday, to come home to Portland, and something else that I think he's working on. That weekend I got a job offer. I took it, even though it wasn't what I wanted. I am terrible at leaps of faith, but how could I not? As I started getting anxious about it, and thinking about looking at other jobs, someone at my level in the store quit. I am perfectly sliding into that position next week. All of my anxieties about moving home have been taken care of, too. I have a place to store my stuff for free for a month, and one of my friends is helping me get my car down there. I am terrible with change. I start to rebel, and try to control everything in my life through rebellion and wild antics...but I have Roy, Alissa and Nolan there. I'm going to stay with them for a month to help calm me, help me transition, and give me time to find a place of my own that I will really love. The big guy upstairs has been all over this transition.
So the next step. The thing that terrifies me is getting back into a church. I haven't been a part of a church family since I lived in Longview. Too burned by too many people. When I met Kapper, one of the things I loved about him was his faith. I thought I'd return to church, but then he got burned and turned his back. Fuck, that was 5 years ago. One of my absolute favorite things on this planet is worship, and I suppose I have found my weird, individual ways of doing it on my own. Talking to God on the side of a mountain. Crying while listening to music. Praying silently in my head. But a part of me has been breaking lately. Last year on one of my trips home, I went to church with Alissa...she wasn't even leading worship, but it didn't feel foreign. So I'm going to try going when I move home. I'm apprehensive. I'm terrified. Last time I was home, Alissa broke out her guitar and started playing some new worship songs they want her to learn, and tears welled up in my eyes. I miss it so bad. So this is me. Tearing down a big wall a year, I guess. We'll see how this one goes. I think it's going to be harder than learning to love/be loved...but part of it goes hand in hand, I think.
Ha, if you had told me this would be me just a year ago, I wouldn't have believed you. Look at me go.
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