On waking up alone

July 22, 2016 "I woke up this morning thinking I was still in bed with S___, relief when I wasn't"

I woke up quickly with that feeling you sometimes get, not knowing exactly where you are but with a vague sense that things are familiar. I thought I was in S____'s house. Overwhelming dread.  

I opened my eyes and reached out my hands to feel if S____ was there in the bed. He was not. I was alone. The realization hit. I was not in the Queen sized bed at S___'s house. I waain my own king size bed in the apartment I now shared with my dog.  

The importance of my emotional safety cannot be overstated. Marriage is not about being happy all of the time. Marriage is about learning how to become the person we need to become in the space that allows us to be safe while making that growth. 

That bed, the one I worried with dread was where I had awakened, was not a safe place for me. I learned so much during the months that I spent there about how to soothe myself, how to create my own safe space in the middle of emotional chaos, how to establish and maintain boundaries. I left that bed a much better person than I had been. But the leaving of that bed was a relief so strong I never wanted to go back. 

I had become new. 

When I woke up thinking I was back in that terrible place, it felt like regression. 

And backward was not the direction for me.  

So here's to 10 months of forging a new independent path, to a lifetime of progression, to the goal of always waking up in a bed that is a safe space for me to land.