Living Outside The Box....just a girl really

So today, I'm going to venture out of my norm, and give you all more than a "surface glimpse" of who I am, and a passing glance into my life. Call it a mini bio, if you will. But I had one hell of a night and well, I'm having a hard time finding my humor today. Bear with me...I'm a rambler.


I'm 36. Almost 37. And up until a few months ago, I thought I had my life pretty much figured out. I was seriously mistaken. I've lived a crazy and often chaotic life. Married for 14 years to a Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force, I have 2 kids, and 1 cat who thinks she's a dog. Currently, I'm going through a messy divorce as well. I've always been a writer. Words are beautiful to me, and I love being able to express myself through the written word. I just love how they sound. I see something on TV, read something in the news, or just hear a word or phrase coming out of a friends mouth, and before I know it.... Ive written 10 pages. And yes, I still use paper and pen. Old school.

But, I'm not here to talk about my writing. I'm here to tell my story: and this is it.....

I was molested at age 8, raped at 13; I guess you could say I've been through my fair share of pain. And you're right, I have. I was adpoted at birth, and my biological mother is a crack addicted, part time innmate. My real father, whom I never got the chance to meet, is deceased. I partied hard in school....which was my self medicated attempt at easing my pain, but only served to leave me scarred and a mother at 18 years old. But I'm a survivor....and I'm surviving.


Before marrying the man I'm currently divorcing, I was married once before to a cowboy punk who walked out on me one Christmas Day. I could have cried like everyone else, and honestly, I probably did shed a tear or two. But those tears weren't for the loss of a marraige, they were for the death of my child that I had just lost that same Christmas morning due to a miscarraige. No, the tears weren't for that cowboy, who just abandoned me and left me alone in my pain. They were for my unborn. But I'm a survivor.....and I'm still surviving.


Five miscarraiges later, and a new husband in the Air Force who I was supposed to grow old with, somehow I ended up in white picket fence suburbia.... with 2 children, a home, and a cat. I wasn't surviving any longer, I was "living". Thinking back now, and the lie it all became, I never fully expected my life to come crashing down on me the way that it did; so fast, and so hard. But it did, and miraculously, I still survived it.


It started off small. Little things, that although not easily overcome, were still somehow manageable. My daughter was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease, my son with Autism. Between the 3 of us, we have life threatening allergies, heart conditions, and auto-immune disorders. We have a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist, an allergist, an opthamologist, a rheumotologist and an endocrinologist. And that's just to name a FEW! :) Yet, through it all, I simply "wrote". My thoughts to pen, my pen to paper. Letting those thoughts guide me through every turn, and every storm. I learned to turn inward, to rely on my own soul for wisdom, words and peace. Until August, it worked beautifully....we are survivors, and we are surviving.


But in August of 2009, while in the midst of planning a family move overseas to Japan with the military, I found out that my husband of 14 years had been molesting and abusing my daughter for 11 years. Life, as I knew it, came screeching do a dead halt. I lost my soul. I lost my family. I lost my strength, and for the first time, I also lost my words. Then, as fate would have it, I lost my job as well. I became blank. Void. Empty. Scarred, and terrified beyond measure. Grieving over a life I once had, but one that had been stripped away from me in a fraction of a second. Never to return again. My entire life was a lie, and now even the LIE was gone. And so I begin to ask myself, AM I really and truly a survivor? Because I'm losing my will to survive....


Since before I can remember, I've always had this ability, or maybe a "gift", to take the good with the bad of the things I've been dealt and get back up, only faltering for just a moment. I nurture them, with kid gloves. Caress them, cuddle them, make peace with them...I learn from everything, and everyone, always allowing life's experiences to mold me, and shape me, into what I'm supposed to be in this life. Never, ever, taking for granted what I can learn from any one single thing, place or event. I've always been a survivor.... beautifully surviving.


But how could I learn from THIS?? From this monster of a life event? How? A husband who had done the unthinkable to my flesh and blood. I didn't understand, didn't understand these feelings I was being thrown... such a multitude of emotion, all over the place.... failing at my attempts to reel them in. Left in a place of total despair and disarray. A place, I was afraid, would render me completely frozen in time. Pain, aftermath, restraining orders, polygraphs, court and detectives, all the while frozen in my mind, only helping to make the colorless walls cave in faster in my soul. Is this really my life now? Not only can I not breathe, I can not even find the air thats supposed to enter into my lungs to begin with. Eventually, I did find that air. And it feels good to me now. As I type this today, I've re-read all the things I had written in those first days back in August, and I smile.... to myself, and to my family and friends. I've come along way. In life, and also in the past couple of months. I still do not know, what my day to day life will bring to me each morning when I arise. But I don't worry too terribly much, for I have no power to change them. And even if I did, I wouldn't. Because I'm a survivor....and I'm still surviving.

A week into the aftermath, a great friend told me: "Today, I'm taking you out of your box that you're in. Put all that crisis into that box, seal it up and leave it there, if only for today. I'm taking you out of it, and I'm not giving you a choice in the matter. Turn off your phone, leave it in the box as well. It will all still be there tomorrow, unchanged, and you can return to it then."

So I did. And I have to say, that single act was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Yet, it was the best advice I was given, and listened to. For whatever the reason, I did it. I left my pain, my thoughts, and my fears in that box. And suprisingly, the next day, when I returned to that beautiful painful box of hell, it occured to me that I didn't want back in... and damnit I haven't been back in since! Oh, I take it out every single day. I talk to it, hold it, touch it... make sure it's all still in there. But get back in that box of hell? Never again. Finally I am at peace. With myself, my mind and my soul. My words have been given back to me, and they are as beautiful and glorious as ever before. I have found my "place", and it's outside of that box.


And while I may have lost everything.....my life, my family, my marriage, my world, my life; in doing so, I have gained everything back in return and so much more. No, my life isn't easier, or the same. But it's still good; imperfectly marred, and insanely beautiful. Not only am I truly blessed for the things I've been through, the things that I've learned, and the things that I have now, but I am finally happy....and at peace.  And even though yes, I'm surving life, I like to better desribe as LIVING IT, finally.....


and that? IS MY STORY!!!


"Elizabeth"

Editors note:


As of today, while writing this blog, I was informed that my phone is about to be turned off for lack of payment, my lovely husband elected retirement so as to not have to pay me hardly any child support/alimony, and my car insurance is also being canceled at the end of the month....Oh, and as winter is fast approaching, my heater just went out as well! Welcome to Hollywood, where dreams come true baby, dreams come true!


And yet, even still, I will learn from this, grow from this, remain true to my heart, and come out alive...and yes, I will still be living my life as I have always done in the past, now, and in the future. Now, anyone want to send me some money? Or maybe give me a job? I heard from some very knowledgable people, that I am an excellent writer :) oh yeah, I'm not joking... I need a damn job, and some help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!