Today marks exactly 1 year and a week since I left my engagement ring on my fiancé's dinning table and walked out of the apartment we were going to call home. And a year since we officially canceled the wedding. I thought, in all honesty, that I'd be either in some foreign country creating a new identity for myself and completely forgetting everything and everyone in the States, or living a happy, normal life in the city I called home, serving in my beloved church and being a nanny for years to come.
The last thing I expected was feeling pressured by my ex to avoid him at all costs. I did not expect to feel uncomfortable in my own church, or that I wasn't welcome to be with his family. I wasn't expecting my heart to burn with such hurt and anger that my body literally gave out, leaving me partially unconscious on the floor or shivering on the couch with fevered chills on numerous occasions. I did not expect to be so afraid of seeing him just walking down the streets that I needed to run away, move out of state.
I didn't have any real expectations when I decided I would not marry him. Except just that, not marrying him. But turns out that humans aren't naturally forgiving and civil. In fact, they are quite rude and intolerant of things that could cause them discomfort. So when you end a relationship, that person tends to have a strong desire for you to not exsist.
The thing is, they do exsist and will continue on exsisting as long as you do. Your identity is now tangled up in theirs even though all other ties to them have been severed. I guess I thought I could move on and pretend it didn't happen. Or at least pretend that it wasn't a big deal. But you can't rip out a chapter in a book and expect to know the whole story.
I'm very glad I have not been married the past 10 months. But that man left scars in my heart that will forever ache for him. I hope one day I can enjoy irises and daffodils without thinking about the bouquets he always made for me. I hope that I will grow out of this fear he instilled in me of being fully myself. I hope that one day I will be able to trust a man when he says he loves me.
My dearest friend told me one night, just weeks before her own wedding, "God doesn't make you go through anything he thinks you can't handle. That means he thinks you're pretty strong." When I woke up on the floor of my apartment after blacking out from the pain, I thought I would die. I wished it. I did not believe I was going to survive. But here I stand, a year later.
I still cry about it, I still think about him randomly and feel the ache of his absence, but I survived.
God has been putting the shards of my heart carefully back together. I hate God for thinking I was strong enough to handle that but... I guess he was right, yet again.
