One Step at a Time
Our beautiful home that was meant to be our forever home…
When he left every thought of what the future would be like paralyzed me. Every fight I had over those first early days was done one step at a time. I didn’t just lose my marriage and my confidence when he left, but also every ability I’d ever had to multi task or problem solve. It literally felt as though I was holding on, actually really physically holding on to life and all that I knew. I couldn’t think about the next day, I could barely think to the end of the current day. I credit a small group of friends, along with my Dad, and our daughters for keeping me going in those early days. Feeding ourselves became a huge issue because I had growing daughters who, completely unreasonably I felt, wanted to eat every day. They needed packed lunches every day. Grocery shopping needed doing every few days, because I couldn’t think far enough through the week to anticipate what I would need. But I developed coping strategies… for the first month I ate the same dinner every night, it was how I coped. I managed to negotiate with one daughter who announced that she wanted to become a vegetarian the week after he left, and we agreed a compromise of her giving up all red meat. This lasted 4 months and she is now fully vegetarian and has been for the last 3 years. I know for her it was a control thing, she was 9 and her Daddy had pulled the rug out from under her, she had no control over anything in her little world. She stopped sleeping, had no idea what her life was going to look like moving forward and her only consistency (me) cried an awful lot! I totally understand where the desire to control something came from for her; but I’ll be honest now, it nearly tipped me over the edge. And I embraced internet grocery shopping! Within 4 months every grocery shop for a whole year was done online, I suspect the order was pretty much the same every week, but it meant we had a fridge and pantry of food and slowly slowly our normality began to reform and reinvent itself.
Just over three years later I still struggle, at times, with confidence and I have control issues which drive me to make endless to do lists, and track my spending in countless excel spreadsheets, but I have absolutely no credit card debt and generally I can multi task the heck out of a series of things I need to do and as I have worked to bring this blog to life I have been simultaneously working on the most exciting multi-task of my new single life; as quarantine and lock down hit New York State my house was listed to sell, it sold very quickly the first time around; then an inspection issue meant it was up for sale a second time. Empty boxes which had been piling up in the garage all winter were reassembled and the packing began and we, my family of 3, went house hunting. Our house sold a second time and as I edit this for the umpteenth time we left our home, what was meant to be our forever home, 2 weeks ago BUT so much more excitingly we are due to close on our new home this week. The 2 weeks between homes has been a challenge I won’t lie, but right now there is light at the end of the tunnel. I’m under no illusion that there won’t still be days when I will feel overwhelmed, both this week as the move plays to its conclusion and also over the coming weeks and months as we unpack and realize we still have so much more downsizing to do! But it’s such a different feeling when you are the one orchestrating the change, don’t you think?
Be kind, be gentle,
Denise xoxo
