I chose pain over my husband...

If I had to pick a theme of my life it would be pain.

The theme of my life is pain. 

Always pain.

That is how I deal with life and circumstances, I hurt.

No matter what happens in my life, it makes me sad.

I just get sad.

I am sensitive. 

That is just a fact... 

I turn all negative emotion into sadness.

Because I can control sadness.

I know how sadness feels. 

I know the in's and the out's of sorrow.

 I know how to be sad, how to handle being sad, how to not show I am sad.

I know sad.

Sad is my best friend. 

She is my coping mechanism. 

She is safety. 

I know Sad and she knows me.

But it used to be a battle I fought.

Depression has always been a fight that I have been in.

It has been something that I have been struggling against for years.

But that is the point.

It used to be a fight.

I used to be battling against it.

Not letting it win.

Not getting in bed with it and letting it control me.

Somewhere down the line, I stopped fighting.

I got tired.

I got sad.

I like being in control.

I like being in control of my emotions.

I like being able to have a grip on my heart.

I don't like feeling something that I can't control.

And I can control pain.

So that is all I chose to feel.

All the emotion that I could be feeling, and I choose sadness.

Because sadness already hurts, so you can't possibly get hurt anymore.

And if you do get hurt, it is just more of the same thing, no crash from happy down to pain.

Just pain to more pain.

I chose pain over my husband.

In a recent email I sent him, I explained it this way...

I started thinking why I am sad, and I came to realize that I don't allow happy moments into my life.

I dwell on the sadness because it is familiar, it is comfortable. 

Happiness brings pain in past experience and I can't allow that to happen. 

I have to control the pain that I feel. 

And if I am always feeling pain then I am in control.

But I have so many reasons to be happy... 

I have a wonderful life with you. 

We struggle and we get back up. 

You do everything you can to make me happy. 

You are the most wonderful man to ever love me. 

You never hurt me and are always trying to protect me. 

You are my rock, always there for me. 

And I still choose my pain. 

But not anymore.

I feel like I have definitely put a huge burden on you... 

I asked you to be my happiness while I kept going back to my sadness. 

I asked you to hold me together while I ripped myself apart. 

I stopped fighting for happiness. 

I stopped fighting for the sun to shine. 

I stopped appreciating every single little thing that you do for me.

I am sorry for choosing sadness. 

I am sorry because I feel like I have been fighting this battle of depression for so long that I forgot to
fight. 

I got tired and sadness overcame me. 

But that isn't who I am.

I am not the woman who sits back and lets bad circumstances and crappy feelings to keep her down. 

I am not the kind of woman who backs down from a fight and leaves the rink before I have knocked the opponent out. 

I am sorry for forgetting that.

You see I chose pain over my husband.

He would try to make me happy, try to mend my broken heart...

And I would still run back to pain.

Pain was my love affair.

I chose pain over my husband.

I chose to feel everything in pain.

I chose to never heal, I only chose to break apart.

And then be upset when my husband couldn't keep me together anymore.

I would be happy with my husband.

He would make the happiest woman in the world.

Yet, I still run back to my pain.

I never let my happiness with my husband last.

And so let me tell you this...

Stop having love affairs with your feelings and your emotions.

Stop heading back to how you always feel.

If you struggle with anger, shame, sadness... Anything that damages you...

Take it to your heavenly Father and leave it there.

Anything other than love, trust, hope, faith, anything that tears your down instead of build you up...

Stop.

Stop running back to lay in bed with your sorrow.

Stop running into the arms of your emotions.

Because your spouse will feel it.

Your spouse deserves to be chosen over your past.

The love of your life deserves to be the most important thing to you.

It isn't an easy recovery.

It is a battle that you will probably fight the rest of your life.

But fight you must.

And if you must sit down for a while, please let your spouse fight the battle for you.

But please, please, get back up, pick up your sword and fight like hell for what you hold dear.

Choose your love.

Run to your God.

Let your spouse love you.

Choose happiness.

And never, ever give up.

Get knocked down.

Get sad.

Get messed up.

Get bruised and broken.

But get back up.

Always get back up.

Love,

Mrs. K

How to live a life from hell...

Literally, I have no freaking clue how anyone ever survived this lifestyle before me. I have no idea how women for centuries have survived seeing their precious men go off to war, with no promise of their return. And I also don't understand how most of them did it without any communication whatsoever. I can't comprehend how we as women have survived through war after war... Not only are we left alone to survive on our own, we are also left trying to put our men back together once they have returned. I cannot wrap my mind around it.

Because this is a life from hell. A life filled of bitter pain and anger. A life of fear and anxiety. A life of loneliness and frustration. A life that you live by yourself while your love is ripped away from you.

How do you survive this life? How do you get up every day, how do you cook and clean and manage the finances and fix the toilets and the cars and the light bulbs? How do you do both your man's job and your own?

How do you manage the sorrow in your soul? How do you learn to cope with the anxiety attacks, and the health problems, and the depression that is lurking at your door just waiting for one moment of weakness so he can devour you? How do you fight to keep your head above the water when you have been fighting the waves together and now you must swim alone?

This is a life straight from hell. Literally. I am a very vindictive person...but even still, this is not a life that I would wish on my worst enemies. How has anyone ever survived this life?

You take one week to mope around. One week to eat crap food and leave your candy wrappers on the floor. You leave your laundry laying around the floor and your bed is constantly unmade, if you even managed to get out of it. You shower only when you need to go to the store because you ran out of wine. You watch 8 seasons of a tv show because you have nothing better to do. And then it all changes. You wake up one morning and you realize that you are a badass. You are a super hero in the flesh and blood. You are a mad woman for even falling in love with your man...and an even more mad woman for marrying him. But you realize that you were born to be a mad woman. Because only mad woman could get through this life. No sane person could ever survive the life that you are being called to live.

You realize that you will survive this. You learn how to fix a toilet and change your own oil. You adapt to them being here and then being gone.

You also have to learn to give yourself grace for that week that you couldn't handle it. That goes for anyone in any situation in life. Give yourself grace. Don't feel guilty for the time that you took trying to pull yourself together.

So how do you survive this life from hell?

You get up and give it more hell than it gives you.