I am not sorry I left everything behind. The ministry, the conservatism, the husband. I was not particularly happy in that life. Yet, it was all I knew. It was so scary to pack up and move out, defying everything I had been taught and the culture in which I lived. I lost everything, even though I didn’t really have much to lose apart from my daughter. I didn’t really have close friends nearby, I didn’t have much materially, and I didn’t have much in the way of a marriage. I didn’t have all these great memories of travel or of college. I am glad I walked because in the long run, I walked to something better.

Still, it hurts to see how easily people moved on; how little they cared that I left, and that I am not missed despite trying so hard. It’s like I never happened. Like I never even existed. To pour everything you are into something to be so easily cast aside and replaced makes one feel so insignificant. I tried so hard to be that person, but you just can’t be someone that you’re not no matter how hard you try or think you can be. You can fake it for a little while, convince yourself that you’re one of them, but it won’t work for always. It reminds me of Ray Boltz, currently famous for being a Christian singer who recently came out of the closet. His admission surely must have been much harder than mine. I don’t know how he feels, but I can surely imagine. An admission from a former minister’s wife that she no longer really believes in God is not well received, either. Most of the time I think that if God did exist, then he really just must not want me. I tried so hard living for him, being for him, but it just never worked. No matter how hard I sought, no matter how hard I chased, no matter how hard I tried to just let him find me, God remained elusive.

You can convince everyone around you that you are a certain person, but eventually, you realize that you are fooling everyone around you. Most of all, you realize you are fooling yourself. Before long, who you really are catches up with you whether you like it or not. I really had myself fooled into thinking that I could be the person that I used to want to be, but I just couldn’t. It would be incredibly easy for me to say that I wouldn’t even want to be that person anymore, but if I look at it honestly, I have to admit that person was happy, if not a bit ignorant and bubbly. In the end, I don’t know. Most days, I would say that no, I don’t want to be that person anymore. There are days, however, when the relative ease of it does sound appealing.

I do love my life, but I often wish I could get to where I am now via a different route, a better one. I look around and realize that most people I know didn’t struggle like I did, caught in a place where they didn’t want to be. I left everything behind, but as people go on and live the life that I used to dream of having (even though I have built new and better dreams for myself), I sometimes feel like I was the one left behind.

Tags: atheism, Christianity, depression, divorce, loneliness, loss, moving on, Ray Boltz, sadness, separation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 2:25 am and is filed under Marriage, Divorce, Romance, My Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.