Skip to main content

True Love Waits.

 I wanna tell y'all a secret. It's not really a secret but it is very important. LOVE. YOUR. SPOUSE. Easy right? Seems like it should be. But do you?

I firmly believe that Kevin Dreaden is who I was put on this earth to find. My invisible string. My one true love. My only exception. My guy. And I also firmly believe he's crazy to have stayed. Let me explain. 

We've been together for 12 years. Married for 10. I have been so miserable with myself for these last 10 years that I never let him in. I pushed him away for so, so long. And he stayed. I've always had anxiety. My anxiety isn't a nervous, picky anxiety. It's mean and angry. It lashes out and hurts people I love the most. Hurt people hurt people. Misery loves company is a true statement. That's a hard realization to come to-realizing you're kind of an asshole. It was shocking and made perfect sense all at the same time.

I've done the "outside" work. Now, I'm working tirelessly on the inside. Figuring out why I'm anxious and why I was so unhappy. It's a myriad of things really. Things that aren't important. But it's working. I had a breakthrough a few months ago that I'm finally ready to share. It was late. Kids were asleep and he and I were just chatting and it all hit me at once. The tears, the epiphany, the extreme feelings of regret, and the most intense feeling of love I've ever felt. HE STAYED. I'm absolutely losing it. Snotty crying and incomprehensible. I ask him. "Why did you stay? I was so mean and horrible to you." He looked me dead in my eyes and said everything I've ever needed to hear. Something that I've needed for such a long time. And it was short, concise and to the point. And if you know Kevin, that's gonna be a little funny to you because he's always long winded and thorough. He said, "because I love you and I knew you'd get here."

He could've threw up a peace sign and bounced. I gave him every opportunity. I was so sad and so mean. So undeserving. But, that's when we need to be loved, and loved properly, the most. He saw what could be.

He's everything everyone deserves. What we are all searching for. All the descriptions of love in books and movies. He is all of that. It's more apparent every day that he and I were supposed to find each other. It was always meant to be him and me. It's this. Right now, that's what it's all about. This is what they're talking about when they speak about being "happy." 

I still have much work to do, but, I have all the support I could ever need in Kevin. I've had kind of a crisis of faith in the last couple years, but, I know there is a good Lord above us because of the grace I have been granted when I most certainly didn't deserve it. I really lost the weight when I figured out how to lose the weight of everyone else's expectations. And that, friends, is the real miracle. 

HE STAYED. So I will prove to him that he made the right decision for the rest of my days here. Love you all so much!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hard Questions.

All my life, I've asked myself hard question after hard question. But, I never allowed myself to answer them. I was too afraid that in order to answer them I would have to be my true self. And to me, that was very, very frightening. There's always this box that society expects you to fit in. And of course the box is one size fits all, and my body was never in the one size fits all category. So one day I decided that I wanted to fix the outside of myself. I had a gastric bypass and I lost the weight. Great! Now I can fit in the box. But, as it turns out, the box sucks. I wanted out immediately. I don't need to fit in anyone's box but my own.  So, now it's time for the inside. I went to therapy and got down to the real inner work. Let me tell you, it was exponentially harder to fix the inside than it was to fix the outside. Losing the physical weight was effortless. It just fell off. Like nothing. I learned to listen to my body. I learned what foods didn't agree w...
Post a Comment
Read more

NaClO

Kevin used to hate Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” He managed in retail for 4 years. So, every Christmas, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” blared over every TV in the store on a loop. Multiple times a day for months will really make you hate a song.   I have a confession. I LOVE Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” I’ve suppressed it for years. I knew he hated it and I didn’t want him to endure that kind of torment. I don’t know about you but a song I hate on a loop is my own personal hell. But today, he told me “oh, it’s not so bad…seeing you light up and singing and dancing to it down the aisles at Target makes me happy; so, I enjoy it.”   I used to hate December 15th. It crept up on me one year and my mental health took a nose dive. To me, it meant I was a failure. Not enough while simultaneously too much. It was a prison. But, I’d serve a million life sentences if Kevin was waiting on me when I got out. Kevin taught me how to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not Forever.

I messed up. I knew it would upset me. And I big, fat did it anyway. I listened to Heartland’s “I Loved Her First.” And not just a tear either. I was fighting for my life. Red faced. I just ugly cried right there in Nashville traffic at 6:30 am. I never cared about that song. But, when it’s your daughter you picture as soon as the chorus hits, it all of sudden reminds me that life is so unfair. You’re handed this gorgeous, pissed off, little wrinkly thing. An intensely red, screaming baby girl.  Before Kate, I was mean. And after Kate, I grew kinder. More aware of myself and my actions. She gave me a different purpose. From the moment we met, I knew she was special. I never had a reason to heal before her. And after her, I had all the reasons to heal. I know how that sounds. Shitty. Think of it more like she was the final piece that showed me I COULD heal. She is so much like me it’s comical. She’s taught me it was ok to love myself. She acts just like me. She has my comedic timing...
Post a Comment
Read more