I talked about it relentlessly for months. Not with anyone too close to me, of course. I started with the book club girls and a couple of friends who had recently come into my life.
I didn't tell anyone who knew him very well. No one who would have a biased opinion. No one who would try to tell me what to do instead of listening and supporting me.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that all of these pre-ending conversations were actually the beginning for me. They were my clarity.
Before I started opening up, I silently suffered for years, keeping the pain and the feeling in my heart and my gut that something was wrong, a deadly secret.
And it was deadly.
Keeping it inside was the slowburn death to my soul.
I had become so good at keeping things inside. I learned to numb any and all intense feelings. I learned to keep conversations surface level. I learned to keep myself surface-level. But eventually I couldn’t breathe, and the words tumbled out involuntarily one morning on a walk with a neighbor, and then again at book club.
Once I started speaking, I couldn’t stop. I felt the pull to tell more and more people.
I couldn’t stay silent any longer.
The people I first shared it with had come into my life at exactly the right moment. I needed the mirror they held up for me, because I knew I wouldn’t get it elsewhere. Many of them aren’t around anymore, but I know they were all sent to me to help me at the exact moment I needed them. I know without those women, I may never have used my voice. I may never have gotten to see the reflection I needed to break through the illusion that was my life.
Thanks to these mirrors, I finally accepted my inner truth and used my newfound voice to have my first breakthrough and got divorced.
Then I watched the rest of my disillusioned life collapse around me, and I could finally breathe.
I could finally see.