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.