Renewal

I have finally returned to this place which was previously such a creative outlet for me. The past four months have been the most difficult I have ever experienced. I have been full of so many emotions that at times I was overwhelmed. I decided that visiting with a therapist may help me to work through some of the loss that I was experiencing. She said that the end of a relationship is similar to a death and with any loss there are 5 phases that a person passes through. The phases are depression, grief, anger, denial, and acceptance. In order to heal every person must experience each phase, but you do not necessarily go through each phase in a specific order. So to give you a brief idea of what the past four months have been like would be to say there were days that I experienced all five phases in the same day. It has been an emotional roller coaster to say the least. I was fearful of writing anything as my thoughts changed from hour to hour. I also grew up with the mentality that, "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all." However, I am outgrowing this rule as venting seems to pull a large weight from my shoulders.

Without overwhelming you with every personal detail I will say that finding closure has been difficult as there were months of back and forth. Finally, I saw the writing on the wall and came to the point that I am now where I decided that I had done my very best, but this was not meant to be. This was a really tough place to come to as I believed that by giving up on this relationship that I was somehow quitting. I am of the opinion that once you say yes to a marriage proposal that you should be as equally committed as you would be the day that you say your vows and each day that follows. I was the person that I just described and then I realized that things had been revealed to me and it was OK if that changed my intentions. I was not married yet and that is the biggest blessing of this whole situation.

I sent a friend some photos from my recent trip to Costa Rica and she sent me an e-mail back saying that I looked incredibly happy in the photos. She went on to say, "Not that it makes all the hell you have gone through okay, because it wasn't and isn't, but maybe there were reasons for it that we could not have seen at the time. The preparation for true and real and lasting happiness." This comment has really warmed my soul over the past few days and I believe that it is true.

I am not sure if this is typical or not, but over this whole ordeal I felt like I had lost parts of my own character. I was suddenly playing different roles with family, friends, colleagues, etc. While I was in Costa Rica I felt layers of emotions role away and part of me begin to blossom again. This trip could not have occurred at a better time. Stay tuned for more on Costa Rica...